You may not be, but Ophidimancer has said that he prefers "just pick one parent's race to be" to "your mixed heritage has a unique mechanical place," so I dunno about "nobody."
To clarify I am pleased and made to feel welcome by the fact that Half Elves and Half Orcs would no longer be distinct mechanical oddities and rather just included into the diversity of multiracial character options. I'm not specifically championing the implementation of racial features in the UA, more that I think one option to incorporate characters of mixed heritage is better than having certain combinations be singled out as distinct mechanical others.
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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!
Heard/seen this rumour floating around in the last couple of days. Half races are to be removed. Is this an actual thing or just an April Fools joke? Appreciate if anyone is able to confirm either way. Many thanks.
YOU CAN EASILY LOOK IT UP... ALL HALF RACES ARE BEING REMOVED AND THEY ARE GOING TO DESIGN A SYSTEM TO MAKE ANY TWO RACES BE ABLE TO BE MIXED
SO GIVING YOU WAY MORE OPTIONS FOR HALF BREED RACES IS NOT AN APRIL FOOL'S JOKE. 99
You may not be, but Ophidimancer has said that he prefers "just pick one parent's race to be" to "your mixed heritage has a unique mechanical place," so I dunno about "nobody."
To clarify I am pleased and made to feel welcome by the fact that Half Elves and Half Orcs would no longer be distinct mechanical oddities and rather just included into the diversity of multiracial character options. I'm not specifically championing the implementation of racial features in the UA, more that I think one option to incorporate characters of mixed heritage is better than having certain combinations be singled out as distinct mechanical others.
I fully agree with you there; my point, the perspective you stated you did not share, was that "just pick one parent's race to be" is not actually a "diversity of multiracial character options." It's not a multiracial character option at all.
I don't understand why people make a thread to ask this question and get answers from third parties who might not have accurate info... just look up and read what WOTC said and you will answer your own question. Why would any player know better than WOTC?
So assuming a slight rework of the playtest species, where species features are sorted into 'Feature A' and 'Feature B'. (Please don't throw balance issues at me just yet, as this is just using the playtest species as examples). I'm also only using one elven lineage as an example because it's a proof of concept, not a full writeup.
Basically as everything is separated into two columns, you pick one of each to represent a hybrid species. There are two combinations for how each can be mixed, by picking feature A of one and feature B of the other.
Human
Feature A - Resourceful: You gain inspiration whenever you finish a long rest.
Feature B - Skilful: You gain proficiency in one skill of your choice. In addition, you gain one 1st-level feat of your choice.
Elf
Feature A - Fey Ancestry: You have advantage of saving throws you make to avoid or end the charmed condition on yourself. In addition you can finish a long rest in 4 hours, and cannot be put to sleep by magical means.
Feature B - Elven Lineage: Drow - You gain a darkvision range of 60ft. Additionally you know the dancing lights cantrip. At 3rd level you gain the Faerie Fire spell. At 5th level you gain the Darkness spell.
Half Elf Example A
Feature A - Resourceful: You gain inspiration whenever you finish a long rest.
Feature B - Elven Lineage: Drow - You gain a darkvision range of 60ft. Additionally you know the dancing lights cantrip. At 3rd level you gain the Faerie Fire spell. At 5th level you gain the Darkness spell.
Half Elf Example B
Feature A - Fey Ancestry: You have advantage of saving throws you make to avoid or end the charmed condition on yourself. In addition you can finish a long rest in 4 hours, and cannot be put to sleep by magical means.
Feature B - Skilful: You gain proficiency in one skill of your choice. In addition, you gain one 1st-level feat of your choice.
Heard/seen this rumour floating around in the last couple of days. Half races are to be removed. Is this an actual thing or just an April Fools joke? Appreciate if anyone is able to confirm either way. Many thanks.
YOU CAN EASILY LOOK IT UP... ALL HALF RACES ARE BEING REMOVED AND THEY ARE GOING TO DESIGN A SYSTEM TO MAKE ANY TWO RACES BE ABLE TO BE MIXED
SO GIVING YOU WAY MORE OPTIONS FOR HALF BREED RACES IS NOT AN APRIL FOOL'S JOKE. 99
They've in no way said "they are going to design a system to make any two races able to be mixed." They've said they're still in the process of figuring out exactly how they're going to handle it, which is why people are so vocally advocating for their preferred means of handling it. And "half breed" feels like a really gross term, so maybe try to stay away from it.
You may not be, but Ophidimancer has said that he prefers "just pick one parent's race to be" to "your mixed heritage has a unique mechanical place," so I dunno about "nobody."
To clarify I am pleased and made to feel welcome by the fact that Half Elves and Half Orcs would no longer be distinct mechanical oddities and rather just included into the diversity of multiracial character options. I'm not specifically championing the implementation of racial features in the UA, more that I think one option to incorporate characters of mixed heritage is better than having certain combinations be singled out as distinct mechanical others.
I fully agree with you there; my point, the perspective you stated you did not share, was that "just pick one parent's race to be" is not actually a "diversity of multiracial character options." It's not a multiracial character option at all.
Yes, but that's not what I think is happening with the Origins UA, because I don't think that the species feature is the only thing a character is. I think the other parts of the Origins are just as important.
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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!
You may not be, but Ophidimancer has said that he prefers "just pick one parent's race to be" to "your mixed heritage has a unique mechanical place," so I dunno about "nobody."
To clarify I am pleased and made to feel welcome by the fact that Half Elves and Half Orcs would no longer be distinct mechanical oddities and rather just included into the diversity of multiracial character options. I'm not specifically championing the implementation of racial features in the UA, more that I think one option to incorporate characters of mixed heritage is better than having certain combinations be singled out as distinct mechanical others.
I fully agree with you there; my point, the perspective you stated you did not share, was that "just pick one parent's race to be" is not actually a "diversity of multiracial character options." It's not a multiracial character option at all.
Yes, but that's not what I think is happening with the Origins UA, because I don't think that the species feature is the only thing a character is. I think the other parts of the Origins are just as important.
They're just as important to the character, but this discussion isn't about the character as a whole. It's specifically about how to represent mixed biology. The other parts don't have anything to do with species, so they're not really relevant to the conversation about mixed-race characters. Species and culture are different things. The UA does a decent job of allowing for, shall we say, cross-cultural characters, but again, that's not what this conversation is about.
1.) You may not be, but Ophidimancer has said that he prefers "just pick one parent's race to be" to "your mixed heritage has a unique mechanical place," so I dunno about "nobody."
2.) You're advocating for "offload the work onto DMs," which is definitely not the best solution. It may be the most realistic solution, but the benefit of not being on the professional design side of the conversation is that we don't need to care about what's realistic. Our job is to make it clear what we want. WotC's job is to figure out how to best deliver on that realistically.
3.) Sure, but like... they're revising everything now. You get that, right? This is an opportunity to redo races according to a new paradigm that allows for mixed-race characters to be mechanically represented in a diverse and respectful way. And you're absolutely right that it's super possible, even likely, that they will not do that. But aggressively chastising people for daring to ask WotC to do some work to make a better game is kind of super weird?
1.) Ophidimancer doesn't want species/race to be a mechanical gamist thing people pick to get fancy superpowers. The half-elf statblock has, historically, been one of the most powerful statblocks in the PHB and people routinely pick it not because they want to explore being a biracial, multi-heritage character but because they want a bunch of extra skills and an extra +1. That doesn't sit right with him, and as he explained multiple times in all the other threads that came up, his preference is to use the entirety of chargen as a way to holistically create a multi-heritage character. Part of this is, I imagine, because then you are actively choosing to play a multi-heritage character, rather than just picking half-elf to get two bonus skill proficiencies and that juicy extra +1.
2.) Yes. I am advocating for "offload the work onto the DM", because in this specific instance that is the best solution. Any ruleset for mixing two species together falls apart once you want to mix more than two species, and also any ruleset for mixing species together is going to be severely restrictive and we'll all probably have to homebrew around it anyways so why bother wasting the page space?
3.) The time for revising species came and went. We saw the broad shape of the revisions - they're the same stuff with a new coat of paint, not a fundamentally new system completely incompatible with older existing books. Wizards will not break their promises of book compatibility to reinvent the way the game handles species, especially when they got badly burned for doing exactly that back in 4e. The only time we might get a new species-building paradigm is if we get a hard break from 5e into a definitive Next Edition, and I don't think that's ever going to happen again.
If I'm "aggressively chastising" people, that's not my intent. My intent is to persuade and convince people that it is okay to homebrew this stuff. DMs should let it happen and choke back their reflexive "ABSOLUTELY NO HOMEBREW" panic, and players should not be twatwaffles with it and further justify that panic. Hell, I don't think the DM should have more than a supervisory role in the process - the player should be doing the homebrew mixing and the DM just has to sign off on the result not being obviously obnoxious. I've done it myself with centaur/tiefling, orc/elf(uniya), gnome/hobgoblin (GNOBGOBLINS), and a few un-me mixes I advised other folks on. We don't have to wait for Wizards to give us permission to play multi-heritage characters. We can just make multi-heritage characters and adjust them to our liking.
Would it be better for there to be an Official System? Yes. Do we deserve an Official System? Sure. It would also be better if I had universal health care, universal basic income, and also the ability to walk outside in a blouse without risking getting shot, but sadly we don't always get what we honestly deserve.
Yes, but that's not what I think is happening with the Origins UA, because I don't think that the species feature is the only thing a character is. I think the other parts of the Origins are just as important.
They're just as important to the character, but this discussion isn't about the character as a whole. It's specifically about how to represent mixed biology.
Ahh, see that's kind of the exact reason it feels better to me. Precisely because of the reduced focus on biology. The less we try and focus on how your elf parent makes you better at bows, but your gnome parent makes you better at gadgets (gross) the better.
The other parts don't have anything to do with species, so they're not really relevant to the conversation about mixed-race characters. Species and culture are different things. The UA does a decent job of allowing for, shall we say, cross-cultural characters, but again, that's not what this conversation is about.
And again, the fact that it moves the conversation away from bioessentialist (tbf, I would honestly be pleased if racial features went away entirely, but that's a completely different topic) ideas about how to measure blood quantum and mix things together in a biological way the better. That's not what the conversation should be about.
Besides, why can't your level 1 Feat come from your biology, for that matter?
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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!
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.
It's "stupid" for those of us of ethnic complexity to want to be better represented in the game?
Instead being mixed race means you now can't see it as being both or neither but instead must pick a race?
That happens in the real world and it is disgustingly and disturbingly racist.
Wizards are exemplifying why there are books about the "neo-racism" now rife among those who believe they are saints when it comes to the subject.
Buddy, if you want your human PC to be of mixed ethnicity, that was always allowed. Stretching that idea across fifty species and codifying every one is indeed stupid.
That’s why I think they should do the main choices: “Half”-Elvs/Orcs/Dwarves/Goblins/Gnomes/Hobgoblins/Whatever Else, and then add a section to the DM’s Workshop in the DMG for how to use those as a guideline to create other “Half-”Species. Half a dozen official entries should be more than enough to both add diversity, and set the example for creation of others. Change the name if “Half-Whatever” is problematic, call them “Elfkin” and “Orckin” or something. Write them well so that they don’t have the same negative connotations. Doing it properly would be better than not doing it at all, or worse yet doing it the “Half-Assed” way that they’re planning on doing it. That’s my 2cp anyway.
"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."
Pretending to be mixed race is not the same thing as being mixed race.
By that logic, why are they even doing a mixed species creator in the new PHB as you could right now just take the teifling and play your PC as a teifling mechanically but say you're visually a purple elf? As long as the DM allows it you're good. Wizards is trying to say this is a new building system but it's not; when you have to mechanically select one side only that is not reflecting your bispecies DNA and if you can't be a true bispecies PC then what is the point of the system?
You'd then be ignoring biracial types all together and that's also bad.
Wizards very much needs to improve their Mixed Species Creator because as it sits in the UA PDF we saw it does not represent true mixed race PCs! Mechanically you are being forced to pick one side or the other when you are half of both your parents not just one. As others have said - do tiers for the species traits but don't say you have to pick one side or the other mechanically as that is harmful and dismissive of half of who you are which is what some are taking issue with right now.
"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"
Davyd, that is true and I don't think that's the commentary going on fully here because yes you can still be mixed races and these specific mixes if your DM allows it (they have the final say for their campaign which can limit what's in and what's out especially if they only read RAW) but the issue is what's coming in the products is less than what we have now and it's the how the message was delivered; saying someone is racist for being who they are biologically is inaccurate and hurtful. You have a lot of biracial players and this feels like an attack on some of them; as others have said each has their own take on being biracial and how they feel but one side does not supersede the other.
The Mixed Species Creator Wizards has proposed, which we have not seen revisions on yet, in the Character Origin PDF states you must mechanically chose one parent to take after and that is hurtful to biracial players because they have been told their whole lives they're X or Y or neither because they aren't Q enough...that is the big issue and why a lot people are upset and trying to stress in this thread why improvements are needed and not the ones proposed in the Warharmmer article.
You also have to think about the coming group of new players, they're going to want to play with the newest stuff - stuff which does not include true bispecies PCs so future biracial players won't see themselves now unless they buy the new books which will fade from focus as more new stuff comes out and is talked about more.
Honestly, how many out of 100 new players in 2032 do you think will go hunting the 5e PHB to play half elves or half orcs? How many will select it on DNDBeyond when it's considered a legacy race and buried so deep under the new species files? I would guess not many and that limits seeing yourself in the game.
The Mixed Species Creator needs fixing - it needs to allow you to select a mechanical trait from EACH parent not just one!
Also, I think there's an issue in that dragonborne is still going to be in the new PHB but they're not full dragons or they'd be called dragons; they are half dragon and half something else but because half-dragon isn't their name they're being overlooked it seems and that seems hypocritical. If half elves and half orcs are being pushed to legacy then dragonborne should be as well as it is a half species also technically. It's just a really bad look for Wizards I feel no matter how you slice it right now.
"Will the 2014 PHB still be allowed in adventure league content?"
We have yet to get an answer on this when you think it would be easy to drop a simply and quick yes or no.
"You can represent mixed parentage using multiple aspects of your character's origin from the Background to the Language to the Feat."
Your Background is your job before being an adventure. Feats as far as I've seen do not give you Species features so how does this help? At best you can say Languages adds to things by reflecting the languages you might have heard from both parents, but that's more culture than race.
Can you build an example Ophidimancer of your idea in play?
I'm struggling admittedly to see how it represents bispecies better than me taking Ruthless Endurance from one parent and Stone Cunning from another for example to have a little of each parent in me.
"What if a mixed-race player wants to play a half-something else? "
This is where true mixed species creator comes in Yurei1453.
Allow players to take two species and pick a trait from each...have the species features tier locked so you can't have so "big gameplay mechanics" at once to try and slow down power gamers. Yes it's more work to maybe do that, but the company is literally in the middle of building a new edition of the game essentially and they've already shown they can categorize spells so why can't they take the time to tier lock species traits while they're doing Feats cap locks or or making weapon feature locks?
Maybe it's just me, but if they can take time to do all that but not improve the Mixed Species Creator then it tells me they don't care about really still representing bispecies choices. Cosmetics is not all there is to being bispecies! Again they need to be more clear on what they're trying to achieve because as it stands the MSC does not represent truly mixed species and the flip of that is pushing species which do to Legacy...that feels unbalanced.
I fully agree there needs to be than half orc and half elf as an option but that's where the creator comes in if they truly want to do it right. Saying I have to pick between the two is not doing it right - it's lip service and that's not cool. Also, it's fair to take issue with the lore of the two species, that is problematic also but different topic I would argue than just a discussion on proper character creation/representation.
I would also point out in terms of how "Wizards can't start from scratch" they are talking to creators and there is a book already which could be their start point (Orc And Elf Have A Baby)...talk to those creators and pay them for the work and use it. You literally don't have to start from scratch, but even if you did you're in the middle of building now so make time for this if it's important to you honestly and the comments aren't just facade changes; the community is telling you there's and issue so fix it. I personally for a second don't buy they can't improve the Mixed Species system more to let you be truly bispecies.
"How do you systematically mix those up?"
Math? Ex: why can't the Darkvision range be 10ft...the damage resistance is only for one type (i.e. Cold, or Fire, or Poison, etc) or two at max? The game knows we can count and explains rounding in the PHB so why can't we do math edits in creation?
You have a 30ft walking speed for one parent and a 20 for another = 25ft for you. 120ft Darkvision from parent A and 0 from B = 60 for you. Literally the MSC could be a page or two at max for the book; again I truly don't think it's as hard to do as some claim and if traits are that busted together maybe they need to be edited to a level one for all starting spot. The characters are meant to feel like heroes and power gamers will build busted stuff no matter the options so saying changes can't be done for balance feels weak in my opinion.
Also, isn't there suppose to be an improved DMG coming with the new PHB? Why can't it include ways to handle balance with mixed species traits? Why can't it give advice on dealing power gamers who abuse the game mechanics and thusly turn you off to letting storytellers build their truest character model?
Again I do not buy there's not a way to reach a better middle ground.
There will be two version of Cleric post PHB new launch which are different so yeah saying "because balance" doesn't work as it's already going to be screwed just class wise. Your going to find backwards compatibility is really busted no matter where you look so yeah "balance" is not the reason not to try again. This is just my take though and feeling Wizards could do better for both sides of this debate - don't print half-species by name in the PBH coming and make a better creation system for mixed species to reflect both parents, it's win-win then...more than it is now anyways.
Change the name if “Half-Whatever” is problematic, call them “Elfkin” and “Orckin” or something. Write them well so that they don’t have the same negative connotations. Doing it properly would be better than not doing it at all, or worse yet doing it the “Half-Assed” way that they’re planning on doing it. That’s my 2cp anyway.
1.) Ophidimancer doesn't want species/race to be a mechanical gamist thing people pick to get fancy superpowers. The half-elf statblock has, historically, been one of the most powerful statblocks in the PHB and people routinely pick it not because they want to explore being a biracial, multi-heritage character but because they want a bunch of extra skills and an extra +1. That doesn't sit right with him, and as he explained multiple times in all the other threads that came up, his preference is to use the entirety of chargen as a way to holistically create a multi-heritage character. Part of this is, I imagine, because then you are actively choosing to play a multi-heritage character, rather than just picking half-elf to get two bonus skill proficiencies and that juicy extra +1.
If Ophidimancer's stance is that biology should not be mechanically represented at all, he can just say that. That's a thesis in and of itself and doesn't really need anything else. I don't agree, but I can respect the position and don't really want to argue it.
2.) Yes. I am advocating for "offload the work onto the DM", because in this specific instance that is the best solution. Any ruleset for mixing two species together falls apart once you want to mix more than two species, and also any ruleset for mixing species together is going to be severely restrictive and we'll all probably have to homebrew around it anyways so why bother wasting the page space?
Most people won't want to mix more than two species. If a solution can work in 95% of cases, I don't really think the existence of the extra 5% is a good justification to scrap the entire solution. It's always going to be possible to contrive some scenario that a rule or system can't handle. That doesn't mean we should be okay with WotC just tossing up their hands and saying "**** it, just make DMs do our job for us."
3.) The time for revising species came and went. We saw the broad shape of the revisions - they're the same stuff with a new coat of paint, not a fundamentally new system completely incompatible with older existing books. Wizards will not break their promises of book compatibility to reinvent the way the game handles species, especially when they got badly burned for doing exactly that back in 4e. The only time we might get a new species-building paradigm is if we get a hard break from 5e into a definitive Next Edition, and I don't think that's ever going to happen again.
You're misrepresenting the issues people had with 4e, and this defeatist "the time came and went" attitude doesn't really accomplish anything. I just cannot understand this message of "shut up and stop asking WotC for things."
If I'm "aggressively chastising" people, that's not my intent. My intent is to persuade and convince people that it is okay to homebrew this stuff. DMs should let it happen and choke back their reflexive "ABSOLUTELY NO HOMEBREW" panic, and players should not be twatwaffles with it and further justify that panic. Hell, I don't think the DM should have more than a supervisory role in the process - the player should be doing the homebrew mixing and the DM just has to sign off on the result not being obviously obnoxious. I've done it myself with centaur/tiefling, orc/elf(uniya), gnome/hobgoblin (GNOBGOBLINS), and a few un-me mixes I advised other folks on. We don't have to wait for Wizards to give us permission to play multi-heritage characters. We can just make multi-heritage characters and adjust them to our liking.
I can only really speak for myself and advocate for my own wants. I don't have an "ABSOLUTELY NO HOMEBREW" panic; I have a full-time job making games and don't want to spend even more of my downtime figuring out what species mechanics constitute "too obnoxious for my game." That's why I'm paying money for these books instead of just making my own system. If I have to do that work, I will, but don't yell at me for asking WotC to make a product I want to buy.
Would it be better for there to be an Official System? Yes. Do we deserve an Official System? Sure. It would also be better if I had universal health care, universal basic income, and also the ability to walk outside in a blouse without risking getting shot, but sadly we don't always get what we honestly deserve.
Again, we should still be asking for those things. And in your specific examples, we should be demanding them. D&D is not going to survive except by pure momentum if the playerbase just stops expressing what it wants out of the game and accepts whatever WotC gives them. If the prevailing attitude is "we'll just fix it ourselves" why should they even buy the books in the first place?
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.
Can someone please articulate for me how the half-elf as is doesn't better reflect this than making it standard for the player to be forced to make a conscious choice that prioritizes one over the other?
I'm not asking you to do the math for how many different species there are and the logistics of handling this for each and every possible combination. I'm not asking you to wax lyrical about homebrew. Which we all do.
I'd just appreciate an adequate response to the concerns of myself and others that isn't insensitive and dismissive.
If, when they finalize the races/species, they have a list of maybe 3-4 different "perks" they get, then hybrids SHOULD be pretty easy to handle. You pick the 2 species/races you want, and for each tier, select ONE option from your chosen species/race. More customizations, more options, more varieties....hard to lose there.
A lot of what I am seeing here is folks who seem to be digging for hybrids that get ALL the perks of their parental race/species. That, in effect, is simply powergaming and I have no interest in those folks arguments. You get bits and pieces from each side, not everything.
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Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
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.
Can someone please articulate for me how the half-elf as is doesn't better reflect this than making it standard for the player to be forced to make a conscious choice that prioritizes one over the other?
I'm not asking you to do the math for how many different species there are and the logistics of handling this for each and every possible combination. I'm not asking you to wax lyrical about homebrew. Which we all do.
I'd just appreciate an adequate response to the concerns of myself and others that isn't insensitive and dismissive.
The half-elf is one single specific option. Saying "you can be a half-elf and that's awesome but we won't do anything else whatsoever to support this idea" is, to me at least, equivalent to saying "You can be a Latino-American and that's awesome, but if you're any other combination of peoples, cultures, or heritages you can **** off and die in a ditch you stupid loser". The half-elf stat block unfairly and unnecessarily highlights one specific combination of peoples; its existence alone dismisses and devalues any other combination that doesn't get its very own super special unique-to-it stat block.
This is not to say that the Origins Playtest solution is the correct one. Clearly it is not, and this was fed back to Wizards loud and clear back when Origins was new. Many people strongly disliked the idea and made no bones about stating so. Very few people support the Origins solution, and those who do are constantly told they're bad horrible ugly people for doing so. That does not mean that the half-elf stat block is the correct solution, either. That simply sends the message that one particular combination of heritages is worthy of being included in the game but no other combination is valid and they must all be rejected.
Honestly? The thing that seems to draw most people I've seen speak of it to the half-elf is the idea of being outcast from either of their parent cultures - not fitting with humans or elves, forced to make a living themselves with no family or heritage all their own. Why does that need to be a species? To me that's the sort of thing that would be better suited to being expressed as a background, since Background is specifically for detailing your position in society prior to becoming an adventurer. if your position in society was "None", then you can create an Outcast or Wanderer background using the excellent 1DD Origins background creation rules to evoke that sense of being estranged from the cultures of your parentage and part of either a third, independent culture or part of no culture at all.
No one is saying someone cannot play a person of mixed heritage. The only thing some people are saying is that one specific combination of genetic traits should not be given especial primacy over all other combinations simply due to historical inertia. I, personally, strongly favor homebrew species mixtures as the solution to this issue, but if Wizards can somehow manage to create a systematic way to mix species traits that doesn't result in ten thousand screaming grognards burying the forum in hatred and vitriol, more power to them. I don't think that's possible, but sure, they can try.
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To clarify I am pleased and made to feel welcome by the fact that Half Elves and Half Orcs would no longer be distinct mechanical oddities and rather just included into the diversity of multiracial character options. I'm not specifically championing the implementation of racial features in the UA, more that I think one option to incorporate characters of mixed heritage is better than having certain combinations be singled out as distinct mechanical others.
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!
YOU CAN EASILY LOOK IT UP... ALL HALF RACES ARE BEING REMOVED AND THEY ARE GOING TO DESIGN A SYSTEM TO MAKE ANY TWO RACES BE ABLE TO BE MIXED
SO GIVING YOU WAY MORE OPTIONS FOR HALF BREED RACES IS NOT AN APRIL FOOL'S JOKE. 99
I fully agree with you there; my point, the perspective you stated you did not share, was that "just pick one parent's race to be" is not actually a "diversity of multiracial character options." It's not a multiracial character option at all.
I don't understand why people make a thread to ask this question and get answers from third parties who might not have accurate info... just look up and read what WOTC said and you will answer your own question. Why would any player know better than WOTC?
So assuming a slight rework of the playtest species, where species features are sorted into 'Feature A' and 'Feature B'. (Please don't throw balance issues at me just yet, as this is just using the playtest species as examples). I'm also only using one elven lineage as an example because it's a proof of concept, not a full writeup.
Basically as everything is separated into two columns, you pick one of each to represent a hybrid species. There are two combinations for how each can be mixed, by picking feature A of one and feature B of the other.
Human
Feature A - Resourceful: You gain inspiration whenever you finish a long rest.
Feature B - Skilful: You gain proficiency in one skill of your choice. In addition, you gain one 1st-level feat of your choice.
Elf
Feature A - Fey Ancestry: You have advantage of saving throws you make to avoid or end the charmed condition on yourself. In addition you can finish a long rest in 4 hours, and cannot be put to sleep by magical means.
Feature B - Elven Lineage: Drow - You gain a darkvision range of 60ft. Additionally you know the dancing lights cantrip. At 3rd level you gain the Faerie Fire spell. At 5th level you gain the Darkness spell.
Half Elf Example A
Feature A - Resourceful: You gain inspiration whenever you finish a long rest.
Feature B - Elven Lineage: Drow - You gain a darkvision range of 60ft. Additionally you know the dancing lights cantrip. At 3rd level you gain the Faerie Fire spell. At 5th level you gain the Darkness spell.
Half Elf Example B
Feature A - Fey Ancestry: You have advantage of saving throws you make to avoid or end the charmed condition on yourself. In addition you can finish a long rest in 4 hours, and cannot be put to sleep by magical means.
Feature B - Skilful: You gain proficiency in one skill of your choice. In addition, you gain one 1st-level feat of your choice.
They've in no way said "they are going to design a system to make any two races able to be mixed." They've said they're still in the process of figuring out exactly how they're going to handle it, which is why people are so vocally advocating for their preferred means of handling it. And "half breed" feels like a really gross term, so maybe try to stay away from it.
Yes, but that's not what I think is happening with the Origins UA, because I don't think that the species feature is the only thing a character is. I think the other parts of the Origins are just as important.
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!
They're just as important to the character, but this discussion isn't about the character as a whole. It's specifically about how to represent mixed biology. The other parts don't have anything to do with species, so they're not really relevant to the conversation about mixed-race characters. Species and culture are different things. The UA does a decent job of allowing for, shall we say, cross-cultural characters, but again, that's not what this conversation is about.
Typical that this thread is 95% people just arguing that they're right and other people's arguments or experiences are invalid.
With barely anyone actually offering suggestions about how to actually handle the concepts of hybrid species in DnD.
1.) Ophidimancer doesn't want species/race to be a mechanical gamist thing people pick to get fancy superpowers. The half-elf statblock has, historically, been one of the most powerful statblocks in the PHB and people routinely pick it not because they want to explore being a biracial, multi-heritage character but because they want a bunch of extra skills and an extra +1. That doesn't sit right with him, and as he explained multiple times in all the other threads that came up, his preference is to use the entirety of chargen as a way to holistically create a multi-heritage character. Part of this is, I imagine, because then you are actively choosing to play a multi-heritage character, rather than just picking half-elf to get two bonus skill proficiencies and that juicy extra +1.
2.) Yes. I am advocating for "offload the work onto the DM", because in this specific instance that is the best solution. Any ruleset for mixing two species together falls apart once you want to mix more than two species, and also any ruleset for mixing species together is going to be severely restrictive and we'll all probably have to homebrew around it anyways so why bother wasting the page space?
3.) The time for revising species came and went. We saw the broad shape of the revisions - they're the same stuff with a new coat of paint, not a fundamentally new system completely incompatible with older existing books. Wizards will not break their promises of book compatibility to reinvent the way the game handles species, especially when they got badly burned for doing exactly that back in 4e. The only time we might get a new species-building paradigm is if we get a hard break from 5e into a definitive Next Edition, and I don't think that's ever going to happen again.
If I'm "aggressively chastising" people, that's not my intent. My intent is to persuade and convince people that it is okay to homebrew this stuff. DMs should let it happen and choke back their reflexive "ABSOLUTELY NO HOMEBREW" panic, and players should not be twatwaffles with it and further justify that panic. Hell, I don't think the DM should have more than a supervisory role in the process - the player should be doing the homebrew mixing and the DM just has to sign off on the result not being obviously obnoxious. I've done it myself with centaur/tiefling, orc/elf(uniya), gnome/hobgoblin (GNOBGOBLINS), and a few un-me mixes I advised other folks on. We don't have to wait for Wizards to give us permission to play multi-heritage characters. We can just make multi-heritage characters and adjust them to our liking.
Would it be better for there to be an Official System? Yes. Do we deserve an Official System? Sure. It would also be better if I had universal health care, universal basic income, and also the ability to walk outside in a blouse without risking getting shot, but sadly we don't always get what we honestly deserve.
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we are talking races here and i said a term that caused someone to attack me over racism so yeah tread lightly here... im out
Ahh, see that's kind of the exact reason it feels better to me. Precisely because of the reduced focus on biology. The less we try and focus on how your elf parent makes you better at bows, but your gnome parent makes you better at gadgets (gross) the better.
And again, the fact that it moves the conversation away from bioessentialist (tbf, I would honestly be pleased if racial features went away entirely, but that's a completely different topic) ideas about how to measure blood quantum and mix things together in a biological way the better. That's not what the conversation should be about.
Besides, why can't your level 1 Feat come from your biology, for that matter?
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!
Yup.
That’s why I think they should do the main choices: “Half”-Elvs/Orcs/Dwarves/Goblins/Gnomes/Hobgoblins/Whatever Else, and then add a section to the DM’s Workshop in the DMG for how to use those as a guideline to create other “Half-”Species. Half a dozen official entries should be more than enough to both add diversity, and set the example for creation of others. Change the name if “Half-Whatever” is problematic, call them “Elfkin” and “Orckin” or something. Write them well so that they don’t have the same negative connotations. Doing it properly would be better than not doing it at all, or worse yet doing it the “Half-Assed” way that they’re planning on doing it. That’s my 2cp anyway.
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"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."
Pretending to be mixed race is not the same thing as being mixed race.
By that logic, why are they even doing a mixed species creator in the new PHB as you could right now just take the teifling and play your PC as a teifling mechanically but say you're visually a purple elf? As long as the DM allows it you're good. Wizards is trying to say this is a new building system but it's not; when you have to mechanically select one side only that is not reflecting your bispecies DNA and if you can't be a true bispecies PC then what is the point of the system?
You'd then be ignoring biracial types all together and that's also bad.
Wizards very much needs to improve their Mixed Species Creator because as it sits in the UA PDF we saw it does not represent true mixed race PCs! Mechanically you are being forced to pick one side or the other when you are half of both your parents not just one. As others have said - do tiers for the species traits but don't say you have to pick one side or the other mechanically as that is harmful and dismissive of half of who you are which is what some are taking issue with right now.
"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"
Davyd, that is true and I don't think that's the commentary going on fully here because yes you can still be mixed races and these specific mixes if your DM allows it (they have the final say for their campaign which can limit what's in and what's out especially if they only read RAW) but the issue is what's coming in the products is less than what we have now and it's the how the message was delivered; saying someone is racist for being who they are biologically is inaccurate and hurtful. You have a lot of biracial players and this feels like an attack on some of them; as others have said each has their own take on being biracial and how they feel but one side does not supersede the other.
The Mixed Species Creator Wizards has proposed, which we have not seen revisions on yet, in the Character Origin PDF states you must mechanically chose one parent to take after and that is hurtful to biracial players because they have been told their whole lives they're X or Y or neither because they aren't Q enough...that is the big issue and why a lot people are upset and trying to stress in this thread why improvements are needed and not the ones proposed in the Warharmmer article.
You also have to think about the coming group of new players, they're going to want to play with the newest stuff - stuff which does not include true bispecies PCs so future biracial players won't see themselves now unless they buy the new books which will fade from focus as more new stuff comes out and is talked about more.
Honestly, how many out of 100 new players in 2032 do you think will go hunting the 5e PHB to play half elves or half orcs? How many will select it on DNDBeyond when it's considered a legacy race and buried so deep under the new species files? I would guess not many and that limits seeing yourself in the game.
The Mixed Species Creator needs fixing - it needs to allow you to select a mechanical trait from EACH parent not just one!
Also, I think there's an issue in that dragonborne is still going to be in the new PHB but they're not full dragons or they'd be called dragons; they are half dragon and half something else but because half-dragon isn't their name they're being overlooked it seems and that seems hypocritical. If half elves and half orcs are being pushed to legacy then dragonborne should be as well as it is a half species also technically. It's just a really bad look for Wizards I feel no matter how you slice it right now.
"Will the 2014 PHB still be allowed in adventure league content?"
We have yet to get an answer on this when you think it would be easy to drop a simply and quick yes or no.
"You can represent mixed parentage using multiple aspects of your character's origin from the Background to the Language to the Feat."
Your Background is your job before being an adventure. Feats as far as I've seen do not give you Species features so how does this help? At best you can say Languages adds to things by reflecting the languages you might have heard from both parents, but that's more culture than race.
Can you build an example Ophidimancer of your idea in play?
I'm struggling admittedly to see how it represents bispecies better than me taking Ruthless Endurance from one parent and Stone Cunning from another for example to have a little of each parent in me.
"What if a mixed-race player wants to play a half-something else? "
This is where true mixed species creator comes in Yurei1453.
Allow players to take two species and pick a trait from each...have the species features tier locked so you can't have so "big gameplay mechanics" at once to try and slow down power gamers. Yes it's more work to maybe do that, but the company is literally in the middle of building a new edition of the game essentially and they've already shown they can categorize spells so why can't they take the time to tier lock species traits while they're doing Feats cap locks or or making weapon feature locks?
Maybe it's just me, but if they can take time to do all that but not improve the Mixed Species Creator then it tells me they don't care about really still representing bispecies choices. Cosmetics is not all there is to being bispecies! Again they need to be more clear on what they're trying to achieve because as it stands the MSC does not represent truly mixed species and the flip of that is pushing species which do to Legacy...that feels unbalanced.
I fully agree there needs to be than half orc and half elf as an option but that's where the creator comes in if they truly want to do it right. Saying I have to pick between the two is not doing it right - it's lip service and that's not cool. Also, it's fair to take issue with the lore of the two species, that is problematic also but different topic I would argue than just a discussion on proper character creation/representation.
I would also point out in terms of how "Wizards can't start from scratch" they are talking to creators and there is a book already which could be their start point (Orc And Elf Have A Baby)...talk to those creators and pay them for the work and use it. You literally don't have to start from scratch, but even if you did you're in the middle of building now so make time for this if it's important to you honestly and the comments aren't just facade changes; the community is telling you there's and issue so fix it. I personally for a second don't buy they can't improve the Mixed Species system more to let you be truly bispecies.
"How do you systematically mix those up?"
Math? Ex: why can't the Darkvision range be 10ft...the damage resistance is only for one type (i.e. Cold, or Fire, or Poison, etc) or two at max? The game knows we can count and explains rounding in the PHB so why can't we do math edits in creation?
You have a 30ft walking speed for one parent and a 20 for another = 25ft for you. 120ft Darkvision from parent A and 0 from B = 60 for you. Literally the MSC could be a page or two at max for the book; again I truly don't think it's as hard to do as some claim and if traits are that busted together maybe they need to be edited to a level one for all starting spot. The characters are meant to feel like heroes and power gamers will build busted stuff no matter the options so saying changes can't be done for balance feels weak in my opinion.
Also, isn't there suppose to be an improved DMG coming with the new PHB? Why can't it include ways to handle balance with mixed species traits? Why can't it give advice on dealing power gamers who abuse the game mechanics and thusly turn you off to letting storytellers build their truest character model?
Again I do not buy there's not a way to reach a better middle ground.
There will be two version of Cleric post PHB new launch which are different so yeah saying "because balance" doesn't work as it's already going to be screwed just class wise. Your going to find backwards compatibility is really busted no matter where you look so yeah "balance" is not the reason not to try again. This is just my take though and feeling Wizards could do better for both sides of this debate - don't print half-species by name in the PBH coming and make a better creation system for mixed species to reflect both parents, it's win-win then...more than it is now anyways.
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If Ophidimancer's stance is that biology should not be mechanically represented at all, he can just say that. That's a thesis in and of itself and doesn't really need anything else. I don't agree, but I can respect the position and don't really want to argue it.
Most people won't want to mix more than two species. If a solution can work in 95% of cases, I don't really think the existence of the extra 5% is a good justification to scrap the entire solution. It's always going to be possible to contrive some scenario that a rule or system can't handle. That doesn't mean we should be okay with WotC just tossing up their hands and saying "**** it, just make DMs do our job for us."
You're misrepresenting the issues people had with 4e, and this defeatist "the time came and went" attitude doesn't really accomplish anything. I just cannot understand this message of "shut up and stop asking WotC for things."
I can only really speak for myself and advocate for my own wants. I don't have an "ABSOLUTELY NO HOMEBREW" panic; I have a full-time job making games and don't want to spend even more of my downtime figuring out what species mechanics constitute "too obnoxious for my game." That's why I'm paying money for these books instead of just making my own system. If I have to do that work, I will, but don't yell at me for asking WotC to make a product I want to buy.
Again, we should still be asking for those things. And in your specific examples, we should be demanding them. D&D is not going to survive except by pure momentum if the playerbase just stops expressing what it wants out of the game and accepts whatever WotC gives them. If the prevailing attitude is "we'll just fix it ourselves" why should they even buy the books in the first place?
Three pages ago I said this:
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.
Can someone please articulate for me how the half-elf as is doesn't better reflect this than making it standard for the player to be forced to make a conscious choice that prioritizes one over the other?
I'm not asking you to do the math for how many different species there are and the logistics of handling this for each and every possible combination. I'm not asking you to wax lyrical about homebrew. Which we all do.
I'd just appreciate an adequate response to the concerns of myself and others that isn't insensitive and dismissive.
If, when they finalize the races/species, they have a list of maybe 3-4 different "perks" they get, then hybrids SHOULD be pretty easy to handle. You pick the 2 species/races you want, and for each tier, select ONE option from your chosen species/race. More customizations, more options, more varieties....hard to lose there.
A lot of what I am seeing here is folks who seem to be digging for hybrids that get ALL the perks of their parental race/species. That, in effect, is simply powergaming and I have no interest in those folks arguments. You get bits and pieces from each side, not everything.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
The half-elf is one single specific option. Saying "you can be a half-elf and that's awesome but we won't do anything else whatsoever to support this idea" is, to me at least, equivalent to saying "You can be a Latino-American and that's awesome, but if you're any other combination of peoples, cultures, or heritages you can **** off and die in a ditch you stupid loser". The half-elf stat block unfairly and unnecessarily highlights one specific combination of peoples; its existence alone dismisses and devalues any other combination that doesn't get its very own super special unique-to-it stat block.
This is not to say that the Origins Playtest solution is the correct one. Clearly it is not, and this was fed back to Wizards loud and clear back when Origins was new. Many people strongly disliked the idea and made no bones about stating so. Very few people support the Origins solution, and those who do are constantly told they're bad horrible ugly people for doing so. That does not mean that the half-elf stat block is the correct solution, either. That simply sends the message that one particular combination of heritages is worthy of being included in the game but no other combination is valid and they must all be rejected.
Honestly? The thing that seems to draw most people I've seen speak of it to the half-elf is the idea of being outcast from either of their parent cultures - not fitting with humans or elves, forced to make a living themselves with no family or heritage all their own. Why does that need to be a species? To me that's the sort of thing that would be better suited to being expressed as a background, since Background is specifically for detailing your position in society prior to becoming an adventurer. if your position in society was "None", then you can create an Outcast or Wanderer background using the excellent 1DD Origins background creation rules to evoke that sense of being estranged from the cultures of your parentage and part of either a third, independent culture or part of no culture at all.
No one is saying someone cannot play a person of mixed heritage. The only thing some people are saying is that one specific combination of genetic traits should not be given especial primacy over all other combinations simply due to historical inertia. I, personally, strongly favor homebrew species mixtures as the solution to this issue, but if Wizards can somehow manage to create a systematic way to mix species traits that doesn't result in ten thousand screaming grognards burying the forum in hatred and vitriol, more power to them. I don't think that's possible, but sure, they can try.
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