Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Not sure where to put this, so I guess I'll put this here.
Not sure if anyone remembers, but some time ago, I did a post voicing my frustrations over there not being an updated Half-Elf available in the new Basic Rules (or anywhere other than Lecacy 2014 as far as I know).
Now, I'm thinking, we should have an option/clause for hybriding our character's species. Sure, we've got Half-Orcs already (I think they got updated, I'm a supreme cheapskate so I dunno for sure), but mixing and matching our character's species would be so cool.
It could work similar to multiclassing with it's own rules and stuff. Like, we could pick two species we wanted to mix and select with traits the character gets from which species. There'd have to be rules if it goes back more than one generation or something, but it could work. Like, we mix a, say, Goblin and Dragonborn, so now we have a short scaley guy with big ears and poison breath. Or maybe a Dwarf and Goliath, so it's a super-tall chunky guy. Or like literally anything!
This could give us so much more customization options for different sorts of ways to utilized different classes. We could have a Human/Dragonborn Monk who has the Veratile Feat because they're half-Human (and breathes FIRE)!
Sure, homebrew is a thing, but like that's a lot of work, and having an official way to do this would be SO MUCH FUN-
Custom Lineages are a thing, and since they are in Tasha's and everything in 5 can be brought to 5.5, you can do this with adjustments.
Ability scores are now more tied to backgrounds than they are races/species, but you can make custom backgrounds as well to make up for it.
You can make a lot with it, and i dare say with planning you can make what you propose.
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player.
The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
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To rise up in triumph should we all unite
The spark for change is yours to ignite."
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I think dnd moving away from all the inherent racism it originally came with and really only finally purged in 2024 rules is a good thing.
When 2024 rules first came out, there were howls of protest and oaths of never adopting the new rules because all the racism was gone.
So species mixing might smack of craniometry or phrenology or various other forms of crypto racism just trying to find another way back into the game.
There are plenty of ways to have fun with the given standard species.
Besides, when a power gamer suggests mixing species, they likely assume they get all the good features of both species. But using a male donkey species and a female horse species gives a mule who is sterile, so to any potential powergamers out there, if you want to mix species, id say each individual species feat of the parents has an 80% chance of failing to pass on to the child, and see who still wants to do it.
“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” — Voltaire
Producing remotely balanced mix and match rules is way beyond the reasonable page count of the species rules, unless the rule is something like
The problem with adding hybridisation across the board is that in order to make it work, you would need each species to have a single large boon and a single small boon, and then basically say "pick 2, and have the large from one and the small from the other". Then, you'll find yourself with very homogenous and basic species, to ensure that there are no overpowered combinations.
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That's basically what Daggerheart has done but in their case it's build in from the start rather than trying to graft it on to a system that already exists