The problem here is that I don't think this is one of the things that should be let go of or, well... I'm not sure quite how to say it.
Let's assume the people in favor of the generic option are right. Half elves and half orcs will be just as popular and common without having their own entries. Then you're not 'giving up' anything. Conversely, if I'm right, we're not giving up the generic option (I was never and am not against it), just giving one/two of the possible combinations within it additional attention and... player visibility? Either way we're not 'giving up' anything.
Snowtworf. Read the species entry for half-elves. Really read it. Soak it in. Ask yourself how often it describes half-elves positively, i.e. "half-elves are [X]" as opposed to negatively, i.e. "half-elves are not [X]". Think, for a minute, about their very name. "Half-elf". Half an elf. Only half of a person. Their very name describes them negatively, in terms of what they are not - an elf or a human. That is frankly yet another way Eberron is vastly and categorically superior to Faerun and the Forgotten Realms; there, half-elves have their own specific name - 'Khoravar' - and are considered a people unto themselves rather than the mongrel by-blows of actuial for-real peoples.
Stegodorkus' player asked "Do we really have to have racism in my fantasy escapism?" If you insist on a 'half-elf' stat block which posits that half-elves are the alien, unwanted by-blows of taboo minglings of elven and human bloods (to say nothing of the endless sea of Bad Implications that are half-orcs)? Then yes. At your table the answer is "Yes, we have to have racism in our fantasy escapism." Does that make people who like half-elves, or half-orcs, racist? No. But it means that sometimes you're going to have to tell somebody else that they can't play what they want to play without the in-game world ostracizing, denigrating, and 'Other'ing them for it, and we've had foruteen pages now - and over a hundred pages in long-locked dead threads, by now - explaining why that is not okay for a great many people.
Snowtworf. Read the species entry for half-elves. Really read it. Soak it in. Ask yourself how often it describes half-elves positively, i.e. "half-elves are [X]" as opposed to negatively, i.e. "half-elves are not [X]". Think, for a minute, about their very name. "Half-elf". Half an elf. Only half of a person. Their very name describes them negatively, in terms of what they are not - an elf or a human. That is frankly yet another way Eberron is vastly and categorically superior to Faerun and the Forgotten Realms; there, half-elves have their own specific name - 'Khoravar' - and are considered a people unto themselves rather than the mongrel by-blows of actuial for-real peoples.
Stegodorkus' player asked "Do we really have to have racism in my fantasy escapism?" If you insist on a 'half-elf' stat block which posits that half-elves are the alien, unwanted by-blows of taboo minglings of elven and human bloods (to say nothing of the endless sea of Bad Implications that are half-orcs)? Then yes. At your table the answer is "Yes, we have to have racism in our fantasy escapism." Does that make people who like half-elves, or half-orcs, racist? No. But it means that sometimes you're going to have to tell somebody else that they can't play what they want to play without the in-game world ostracizing, denigrating, and 'Other'ing them for it, and we've had foruteen pages now - and over a hundred pages in long-locked dead threads, by now - explaining why that is not okay for a great many people.
Hookay. A lot to unpack here.
First off. I'm not against the content of the entry itself being changed. I fully expected some changes going in and, so long as it at least makes sense, I'm willing to accept it. The problem isn't that they are making changes to the half-elf or half-orc entry, it's that they're getting rid of it entirely.
Secondly, you are engaging in an extreme, unfair, and frankly rediculous projection with that whole 'half a person' thing. At no point did I posit, suggest, or anything that a half-elf was worth less than a person. I have no clue where you're getting that from. I suspect that 99.99% of the people who have ever played a half-elf in any setting, not just D&D, have ever considered them to be worth 'less' as a person becaused of their heritage. Instead it sounds like you heard ONE person (if even that. More likely a story about one person) use the term in a negative manner and are now expanding that to include EVERYONE as WELL as taking a stance that opposition to you equates to support for that extreme position. That's not only wrong, that's not an argument, and not even relevant to what's going on in the slightest.
Thirdly, what term are we even supposed to USE then? I get that a 'half elf' may no longer be sufficient given it being opened up and a 'half-elf' being as valid a term for a half elf half human as it is for a half elf half orc, but given the vast amount of variety I don't think it's unfair to refer to a very specific, storied, and frankly BROAD set-up by the name commonly used. What? When I boot up Tales of Symphonia am I suddenly not allowed to refer to Raine/Genis as half-elves because it might offend someone in D&D?
FOURTHLY... As much as I hate to say it... MAYBE WE DO! If one of my friends was uncomfortable with a minor aspect of my character and approached me to ask nicely I change it, then I'd probably listen. But if I'm playing a half-elf character whose entire plot and a massive chunk of their story is that they were, say, blocked from progressing in their magic academy due to their mixed heritage, and the plot I had already hashed out with the GM involved them trying to start their own academy as a result, and someone comes up to me and tells me I need to change that... because the insensitive, judgemental, racist, jerkbags in my backstory and serving as a huge chunk of my character motivation are being insensitive, judgemental, racist, jerkbags... and the whole point is that they were WRONG and BAD for that... Then I'm sorry but the answer is 'no'.
Do we HAVE to have stuff like that in every game? No. Of course not. But to act like it doesn't hold merit as a story device (Just look at games like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Tales of Symphonia, Xenoblade Chronicles, and Divinity: OS2 for ones I played recently off the top of my head) especially when part of the whole point of the inclusion is that it's a negative, wrong, and bad thing to do and the goal is to defy and oppose it. Like, seriously, how many games out there have 'the races need to oppose the BBEG but they all dislike/hate each other and don't really get along and it's up to the main hero to unite them, undo years of racial hate, and possibly form a party made up of representatives of each race to defeat the BBEG' as their main plot?
If someone isn't interested in that and wants to play at a different table, then fine. Don't like horror movies then don't watch them. Don't want racism in your fantasy game don't join one with it in them (even when the point is that it's wrong and needs to be opposed). But then don't go out and demand it get removed or imply that anyone who has it is also approving of it. It's LITERALLY the same thought process as the satanic panic! 'This game has demons in it! IT IS THE WORK OF THE DEVIL AND SEDUCING YOU TO EVIL! BURN IT!' 'But they're the bad guys and the goal is to oppose and defeat them!' 'DEVIL WORSHIP!'
I'm sorry that this 'great many people' will never be able to enjoy games like Tales of Symphonia or Dragon Age, but that's their choice, and I don't think that giving half-elves and half-orcs their own, separate and distinct racial entires instead of being rolled into a generic option, supports that regardless.
Snowtworf. Read the species entry for half-elves. Really read it. Soak it in. Ask yourself how often it describes half-elves positively, i.e. "half-elves are [X]" as opposed to negatively, i.e. "half-elves are not [X]". Think, for a minute, about their very name. "Half-elf". Half an elf. Only half of a person. Their very name describes them negatively, in terms of what they are not - an elf or a human. That is frankly yet another way Eberron is vastly and categorically superior to Faerun and the Forgotten Realms; there, half-elves have their own specific name - 'Khoravar' - and are considered a people unto themselves rather than the mongrel by-blows of actuial for-real peoples.
Stegodorkus' player asked "Do we really have to have racism in my fantasy escapism?" If you insist on a 'half-elf' stat block which posits that half-elves are the alien, unwanted by-blows of taboo minglings of elven and human bloods (to say nothing of the endless sea of Bad Implications that are half-orcs)? Then yes. At your table the answer is "Yes, we have to have racism in our fantasy escapism." Does that make people who like half-elves, or half-orcs, racist? No. But it means that sometimes you're going to have to tell somebody else that they can't play what they want to play without the in-game world ostracizing, denigrating, and 'Other'ing them for it, and we've had foruteen pages now - and over a hundred pages in long-locked dead threads, by now - explaining why that is not okay for a great many people.
Hookay. A lot to unpack here.
First off. I'm not against the content of the entry itself being changed. I fully expected some changes going in and, so long as it at least makes sense, I'm willing to accept it. The problem isn't that they are making changes to the half-elf or half-orc entry, it's that they're getting rid of it entirely.
Secondly, you are engaging in an extreme, unfair, and frankly rediculous projection with that whole 'half a person' thing. At no point did I posit, suggest, or anything that a half-elf was worth less than a person. I have no clue where you're getting that from. I suspect that 99.99% of the people who have ever played a half-elf in any setting, not just D&D, have ever considered them to be worth 'less' as a person becaused of their heritage. Instead it sounds like you heard ONE person (if even that. More likely a story about one person) use the term in a negative manner and are now expanding that to include EVERYONE as WELL as taking a stance that opposition to you equates to support for that extreme position. That's not only wrong, that's not an argument, and not even relevant to what's going on in the slightest.
Thirdly, what term are we even supposed to USE then? I get that a 'half elf' may no longer be sufficient given it being opened up and a 'half-elf' being as valid a term for a half elf half human as it is for a half elf half orc, but given the vast amount of variety I don't think it's unfair to refer to a very specific, storied, and frankly BROAD set-up by the name commonly used. What? When I boot up Tales of Symphonia am I suddenly not allowed to refer to Raine/Genis as half-elves because it might offend someone in D&D?
FOURTHLY... As much as I hate to say it... MAYBE WE DO! If one of my friends was uncomfortable with a minor aspect of my character and approached me to ask nicely I change it, then I'd probably listen. But if I'm playing a half-elf character whose entire plot and a massive chunk of their story is that they were, say, blocked from progressing in their magic academy due to their mixed heritage, and the plot I had already hashed out with the GM involved them trying to start their own academy as a result, and someone comes up to me and tells me I need to change that... because the insensitive, judgemental, racist, jerkbags in my backstory and serving as a huge chunk of my character motivation are being insensitive, judgemental, racist, jerkbags... and the whole point is that they were WRONG and BAD for that... Then I'm sorry but the answer is 'no'.
Do we HAVE to have stuff like that in every game? No. Of course not. But to act like it doesn't hold merit as a story device (Just look at games like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Tales of Symphonia, Xenoblade Chronicles, and Divinity: OS2 for ones I played recently off the top of my head) especially when part of the whole point of the inclusion is that it's a negative, wrong, and bad thing to do and the goal is to defy and oppose it. Like, seriously, how many games out there have 'the races need to oppose the BBEG but they all dislike/hate each other and don't really get along and it's up to the main hero to unite them, undo years of racial hate, and possibly form a party made up of representatives of each race to defeat the BBEG' as their main plot?
If someone isn't interested in that and wants to play at a different table, then fine. Don't like horror movies then don't watch them. Don't want racism in your fantasy game don't join one with it in them (even when the point is that it's wrong and needs to be opposed). But then don't go out and demand it get removed or imply that anyone who has it is also approving of it. It's LITERALLY the same thought process as the satanic panic! 'This game has demons in it! IT IS THE WORK OF THE DEVIL AND SEDUCING YOU TO EVIL! BURN IT!' 'But they're the bad guys and the goal is to oppose and defeat them!' 'DEVIL WORSHIP!'
I'm sorry that this 'great many people' will never be able to enjoy games like Tales of Symphonia or Dragon Age, but that's their choice, and I don't think that giving half-elves and half-orcs their own, separate and distinct racial entires instead of being rolled into a generic option, supports that regardless.
It doesn’t make sense to give them their own racial entries. The game will only give features by race now. What feature would a half orc have that an orc wouldn’t? What feature would a half elf have that an elf wouldn’t? The only thing mixed races would logically have is mixed features, but that would be a can of worms giving players access to blend racial features however they choose. Half elf stats don’t make sense in 5e, but they were really good so I never complained. Moving forward it is better to get rid of mixed race stats. Orcs being in the PHB means you haven’t lost access to playing half orc, and half elf is no longer taking up space allowing them to include the Ardent in this UA. My hope is they ditch the Ardent and just make Aasimar the other PHB race.
Snowtworf. Read the species entry for half-elves. Really read it. Soak it in. Ask yourself how often it describes half-elves positively, i.e. "half-elves are [X]" as opposed to negatively, i.e. "half-elves are not [X]". Think, for a minute, about their very name. "Half-elf". Half an elf. Only half of a person. Their very name describes them negatively, in terms of what they are not - an elf or a human. That is frankly yet another way Eberron is vastly and categorically superior to Faerun and the Forgotten Realms; there, half-elves have their own specific name - 'Khoravar' - and are considered a people unto themselves rather than the mongrel by-blows of actuial for-real peoples.
Stegodorkus' player asked "Do we really have to have racism in my fantasy escapism?" If you insist on a 'half-elf' stat block which posits that half-elves are the alien, unwanted by-blows of taboo minglings of elven and human bloods (to say nothing of the endless sea of Bad Implications that are half-orcs)? Then yes. At your table the answer is "Yes, we have to have racism in our fantasy escapism." Does that make people who like half-elves, or half-orcs, racist? No. But it means that sometimes you're going to have to tell somebody else that they can't play what they want to play without the in-game world ostracizing, denigrating, and 'Other'ing them for it, and we've had foruteen pages now - and over a hundred pages in long-locked dead threads, by now - explaining why that is not okay for a great many people.
Hookay. A lot to unpack here.
First off. I'm not against the content of the entry itself being changed. I fully expected some changes going in and, so long as it at least makes sense, I'm willing to accept it. The problem isn't that they are making changes to the half-elf or half-orc entry, it's that they're getting rid of it entirely.
Secondly, you are engaging in an extreme, unfair, and frankly rediculous projection with that whole 'half a person' thing. At no point did I posit, suggest, or anything that a half-elf was worth less than a person. I have no clue where you're getting that from. I suspect that 99.99% of the people who have ever played a half-elf in any setting, not just D&D, have ever considered them to be worth 'less' as a person becaused of their heritage. Instead it sounds like you heard ONE person (if even that. More likely a story about one person) use the term in a negative manner and are now expanding that to include EVERYONE as WELL as taking a stance that opposition to you equates to support for that extreme position. That's not only wrong, that's not an argument, and not even relevant to what's going on in the slightest.
Thirdly, what term are we even supposed to USE then? I get that a 'half elf' may no longer be sufficient given it being opened up and a 'half-elf' being as valid a term for a half elf half human as it is for a half elf half orc, but given the vast amount of variety I don't think it's unfair to refer to a very specific, storied, and frankly BROAD set-up by the name commonly used. What? When I boot up Tales of Symphonia am I suddenly not allowed to refer to Raine/Genis as half-elves because it might offend someone in D&D?
FOURTHLY... As much as I hate to say it... MAYBE WE DO! If one of my friends was uncomfortable with a minor aspect of my character and approached me to ask nicely I change it, then I'd probably listen. But if I'm playing a half-elf character whose entire plot and a massive chunk of their story is that they were, say, blocked from progressing in their magic academy due to their mixed heritage, and the plot I had already hashed out with the GM involved them trying to start their own academy as a result, and someone comes up to me and tells me I need to change that... because the insensitive, judgemental, racist, jerkbags in my backstory and serving as a huge chunk of my character motivation are being insensitive, judgemental, racist, jerkbags... and the whole point is that they were WRONG and BAD for that... Then I'm sorry but the answer is 'no'.
Do we HAVE to have stuff like that in every game? No. Of course not. But to act like it doesn't hold merit as a story device (Just look at games like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Tales of Symphonia, Xenoblade Chronicles, and Divinity: OS2 for ones I played recently off the top of my head) especially when part of the whole point of the inclusion is that it's a negative, wrong, and bad thing to do and the goal is to defy and oppose it. Like, seriously, how many games out there have 'the races need to oppose the BBEG but they all dislike/hate each other and don't really get along and it's up to the main hero to unite them, undo years of racial hate, and possibly form a party made up of representatives of each race to defeat the BBEG' as their main plot?
If someone isn't interested in that and wants to play at a different table, then fine. Don't like horror movies then don't watch them. Don't want racism in your fantasy game don't join one with it in them (even when the point is that it's wrong and needs to be opposed). But then don't go out and demand it get removed or imply that anyone who has it is also approving of it. It's LITERALLY the same thought process as the satanic panic! 'This game has demons in it! IT IS THE WORK OF THE DEVIL AND SEDUCING YOU TO EVIL! BURN IT!' 'But they're the bad guys and the goal is to oppose and defeat them!' 'DEVIL WORSHIP!'
I'm sorry that this 'great many people' will never be able to enjoy games like Tales of Symphonia or Dragon Age, but that's their choice, and I don't think that giving half-elves and half-orcs their own, separate and distinct racial entires instead of being rolled into a generic option, supports that regardless.
It doesn’t make sense to give them their own racial entries. The game will only give features by race now. What feature would a half orc have that an orc wouldn’t? What feature would a half elf have that an elf wouldn’t? The only thing mixed races would logically have is mixed features, but that would be a can of worms giving players access to blend racial features however they choose. Half elf stats don’t make sense in 5e, but they were really good so I never complained. Moving forward it is better to get rid of mixed race stats. Orcs being in the PHB means you haven’t lost access to playing half orc, and half elf is no longer taking up space allowing them to include the Ardent in this UA. My hope is they ditch the Ardent and just make Aasimar the other PHB race.
To be honest, I'm not fussed about the presence of Half-Elves (or Half-Xs). It really wouldn't bother me if they decided that they didn't want to support their presence anymore. At the worst, we have 5e stats, but even if we didn't...it wouldn't bother me if they were incompatible and never updated to work in 1D&D. It wouldn't bother me if they change the lore to make people comfortable. Go for it.
What has annoyed me is the attitude behind it. Specifically, a non-mechanic being masqueraded as an awesome system. I've never seen D&S stuff as binding. If I don't like something...chuck it out. If I like it I add it in. When WotC releases crunchy content like a.new subclass, a new race, whatever, I see it as them providing content that has been playtested and vetted to be able to be played without breaking my game or the character. Buying the Gloomstalker isn't permission to play a cooler Ranger that works in darkness. It's a construct that is offered to me so I don't have to sit there and test it myself because I've paid them to try it out for me.
The new "system" for half races is nothing new like that it. It's literally taking what we've been doing since forever, reskinning things, and then pretending that it's a new mechanic. No, it's worse than that. It's giving us permission to use it. That's like...me giving you permission to use your own bathroom. The attitude stinks.
I'd rather they just dropped the idea of half races. If they want to bring [actual] mechanics for creating them, that's fine. If they want to do bespoke ones like in 5e, that's fine. If they want to drop them, that's fine. But the way they did it was giving permission to do something that's our right anyway. I could always have taken an Dwarf, called him a Half-Dwarf, and played it, no need for this permission to do it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Snowtworf. Read the species entry for half-elves. Really read it. Soak it in. Ask yourself how often it describes half-elves positively, i.e. "half-elves are [X]" as opposed to negatively, i.e. "half-elves are not [X]". Think, for a minute, about their very name. "Half-elf". Half an elf. Only half of a person. Their very name describes them negatively, in terms of what they are not - an elf or a human. That is frankly yet another way Eberron is vastly and categorically superior to Faerun and the Forgotten Realms; there, half-elves have their own specific name - 'Khoravar' - and are considered a people unto themselves rather than the mongrel by-blows of actuial for-real peoples.
Stegodorkus' player asked "Do we really have to have racism in my fantasy escapism?" If you insist on a 'half-elf' stat block which posits that half-elves are the alien, unwanted by-blows of taboo minglings of elven and human bloods (to say nothing of the endless sea of Bad Implications that are half-orcs)? Then yes. At your table the answer is "Yes, we have to have racism in our fantasy escapism." Does that make people who like half-elves, or half-orcs, racist? No. But it means that sometimes you're going to have to tell somebody else that they can't play what they want to play without the in-game world ostracizing, denigrating, and 'Other'ing them for it, and we've had foruteen pages now - and over a hundred pages in long-locked dead threads, by now - explaining why that is not okay for a great many people.
Hookay. A lot to unpack here.
First off. I'm not against the content of the entry itself being changed. I fully expected some changes going in and, so long as it at least makes sense, I'm willing to accept it. The problem isn't that they are making changes to the half-elf or half-orc entry, it's that they're getting rid of it entirely.
Secondly, you are engaging in an extreme, unfair, and frankly rediculous projection with that whole 'half a person' thing. At no point did I posit, suggest, or anything that a half-elf was worth less than a person. I have no clue where you're getting that from. I suspect that 99.99% of the people who have ever played a half-elf in any setting, not just D&D, have ever considered them to be worth 'less' as a person becaused of their heritage. Instead it sounds like you heard ONE person (if even that. More likely a story about one person) use the term in a negative manner and are now expanding that to include EVERYONE as WELL as taking a stance that opposition to you equates to support for that extreme position. That's not only wrong, that's not an argument, and not even relevant to what's going on in the slightest.
Thirdly, what term are we even supposed to USE then? I get that a 'half elf' may no longer be sufficient given it being opened up and a 'half-elf' being as valid a term for a half elf half human as it is for a half elf half orc, but given the vast amount of variety I don't think it's unfair to refer to a very specific, storied, and frankly BROAD set-up by the name commonly used. What? When I boot up Tales of Symphonia am I suddenly not allowed to refer to Raine/Genis as half-elves because it might offend someone in D&D?
FOURTHLY... As much as I hate to say it... MAYBE WE DO! If one of my friends was uncomfortable with a minor aspect of my character and approached me to ask nicely I change it, then I'd probably listen. But if I'm playing a half-elf character whose entire plot and a massive chunk of their story is that they were, say, blocked from progressing in their magic academy due to their mixed heritage, and the plot I had already hashed out with the GM involved them trying to start their own academy as a result, and someone comes up to me and tells me I need to change that... because the insensitive, judgemental, racist, jerkbags in my backstory and serving as a huge chunk of my character motivation are being insensitive, judgemental, racist, jerkbags... and the whole point is that they were WRONG and BAD for that... Then I'm sorry but the answer is 'no'.
Do we HAVE to have stuff like that in every game? No. Of course not. But to act like it doesn't hold merit as a story device (Just look at games like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Tales of Symphonia, Xenoblade Chronicles, and Divinity: OS2 for ones I played recently off the top of my head) especially when part of the whole point of the inclusion is that it's a negative, wrong, and bad thing to do and the goal is to defy and oppose it. Like, seriously, how many games out there have 'the races need to oppose the BBEG but they all dislike/hate each other and don't really get along and it's up to the main hero to unite them, undo years of racial hate, and possibly form a party made up of representatives of each race to defeat the BBEG' as their main plot?
If someone isn't interested in that and wants to play at a different table, then fine. Don't like horror movies then don't watch them. Don't want racism in your fantasy game don't join one with it in them (even when the point is that it's wrong and needs to be opposed). But then don't go out and demand it get removed or imply that anyone who has it is also approving of it. It's LITERALLY the same thought process as the satanic panic! 'This game has demons in it! IT IS THE WORK OF THE DEVIL AND SEDUCING YOU TO EVIL! BURN IT!' 'But they're the bad guys and the goal is to oppose and defeat them!' 'DEVIL WORSHIP!'
I'm sorry that this 'great many people' will never be able to enjoy games like Tales of Symphonia or Dragon Age, but that's their choice, and I don't think that giving half-elves and half-orcs their own, separate and distinct racial entires instead of being rolled into a generic option, supports that regardless.
It doesn’t make sense to give them their own racial entries. The game will only give features by race now. What feature would a half orc have that an orc wouldn’t? What feature would a half elf have that an elf wouldn’t? The only thing mixed races would logically have is mixed features, but that would be a can of worms giving players access to blend racial features however they choose. Half elf stats don’t make sense in 5e, but they were really good so I never complained. Moving forward it is better to get rid of mixed race stats. Orcs being in the PHB means you haven’t lost access to playing half orc, and half elf is no longer taking up space allowing them to include the Ardent in this UA. My hope is they ditch the Ardent and just make Aasimar the other PHB race.
To be honest, I'm not fussed about the presence of Half-Elves (or Half-Xs). It really wouldn't bother me if they decided that they didn't want to support their presence anymore. At the worst, we have 5e stats, but even if we didn't...it wouldn't bother me if they were incompatible and never updated to work in 1D&D. It wouldn't bother me if they change the lore to make people comfortable. Go for it.
What has annoyed me is the attitude behind it. Specifically, a non-mechanic being masqueraded as an awesome system. I've never seen D&S stuff as binding. If I don't like something...chuck it out. If I like it I add it in. When WotC releases crunchy content like a.new subclass, a new race, whatever, I see it as them providing content that has been playtested and vetted to be able to be played without breaking my game or the character. Buying the Gloomstalker isn't permission to play a cooler Ranger that works in darkness. It's a construct that is offered to me so I don't have to sit there and test it myself because I've paid them to try it out for me.
The new "system" for half races is nothing new like that it. It's literally taking what we've been doing since forever, reskinning things, and then pretending that it's a new mechanic. No, it's worse than that. It's giving us permission to use it. That's like...me giving you permission to use your own bathroom. The attitude stinks.
I'd rather they just dropped the idea of half races. If they want to bring [actual] mechanics for creating them, that's fine. If they want to do bespoke ones like in 5e, that's fine. If they want to drop them, that's fine. But the way they did it was giving permission to do something that's our right anyway. I could always have taken an Dwarf, called him a Half-Dwarf, and played it, no need for this permission to do it.
They have to give permission because of things like Adventure’s League, Rule mongers, and new DMs. Also this isn’t a new rule about half races. It has existed for every other half race except Elf and Orc. If you wanted to be a half dwarf you followed the exact rules presented in this UA. So technically they didn’t drop half races they are just forcing those 2 to follow the same mechanics as any other mixed race. Also I can’t find this
They didn't have to do anything. They could have put in proper mechanics. They could have dropped them. You claim that there are mechanics for the other mixed races, which I don't recall seeing, then they didn't need to come out with this at all. Just refer back to those alleged rules.
New DMs need to learn that this is their game, not WotC's. Rule mongers are going to rule mongers. Adding more rules saying you can't do stuff isn't going to help. If WotC wants mixed races in, then do it properly. If they're ambivalent or want them out, then drop them. Adding express permission to stray from RAW in a specific circumstance just makes things worse for the aforementioned two groups, because by giving express permission to reskin in a specific circumstances, the new DM will logically assume that if express permission is given in this circumstance, then when it's not given, it is not permitted. Likewise, "rule mongers" as you call them will apply the same logic to the same end to beat you over the head with.
Permission is not something that should be given, because it is already in the hands of those who play the game.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
That's not an answer though. Just because a right answer is subjective doesn't mean you should just lazily churn out something that, likewise, some people are not happy with. I know Yurei said my stuff wasn't good enough, but I feel like I put more thought into that entry, which I am not getting paid for and did solely because I wanted to at least try to find a solution to this now 14 page topic, than WotC did with their 'answer'.
"Do it properly" is entirely subjective. There's no one way to do this.
There are ways to do improperly, and "we give you permission to reskin things" is one of them. There are numerous ways that would have been a valid way of dealing with half races in a supportive manner (including just dropping the concept, or not supporting it). That wasn't one of them.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
"Do it properly" is entirely subjective. There's no one way to do this.
There are ways to do improperly, and "we give you permission to reskin things" is one of them. There are numerous ways that would have been a valid way of dealing with half races in a supportive manner (including just dropping the concept, or not supporting it). That wasn't one of them.
Maybe they just need to drop the idea that your character has 'race' as part of the buildout entirely. Assign physical traits specific point values based on mechanical impact within the game rules, allow the players to buy X points of traits from a list of them, and call themselves whatever they want to. No more elves, or humans, or tabaxi, or tortles, etc...
New DMs need to learn that this is their game, not WotC's.
Perhaps by the book telling them?
Adding express permission to stray from RAW in a specific circumstance just makes things worse for the aforementioned two groups, because by giving express permission to reskin in a specific circumstances, the new DM will logically assume that if express permission is given in this circumstance, then when it's not given, it is not permitted.
Imagine this: "As with the rest of the rules, remember that you can change this."
Permission is not something that should be given, because it is already in the hands of those who play the game.
If something is important, you usually want to say it more than once.
They didn't have to do anything. They could have put in proper mechanics. They could have dropped them. You claim that there are mechanics for the other mixed races, which I don't recall seeing, then they didn't need to come out with this at all. Just refer back to those alleged rules.
New DMs need to learn that this is their game, not WotC's. Rule mongers are going to rule mongers. Adding more rules saying you can't do stuff isn't going to help. If WotC wants mixed races in, then do it properly. If they're ambivalent or want them out, then drop them. Adding express permission to stray from RAW in a specific circumstance just makes things worse for the aforementioned two groups, because by giving express permission to reskin in a specific circumstances, the new DM will logically assume that if express permission is given in this circumstance, then when it's not given, it is not permitted. Likewise, "rule mongers" as you call them will apply the same logic to the same end to beat you over the head with.
Permission is not something that should be given, because it is already in the hands of those who play the game.
I attempted to pull up the mechanics for other mixed races and couldn’t find them. I realized it’s because they aren’t written. They are from a Jeremy Crawford interview. That is why they are being written out now. You were correct they don’t actually exist beyond something he said. I couldn’t even find it written in sage advice. So it really was less of a mechanic and more of an idea he had on how to handle it. Now they are pushing toward making it a mechanic.
As far as giving permission have you ever read the DMG? They give all kinds of permission. There is also a really good Jeremy Crawford interview were he talks about giving DMs permission. He said if they found often if they didn’t say you could then DMs and players assumed you couldn’t.
If ability scores are no longer tied to race, then half races serve no logical purpose. It’s a RP thing at that point unless being a half race grants unique features. Even then it is easier to create one rule about combining two races than it is to make a half elf and half orc features stats, especially since they wouldn’t have any new features just a combination of their parent’s features. I fear allowing players to blend racial features is a min/maxers wet dream, but it could solve your gripe and save WotC a page in the PHB since they don’t have to describe the culture of a half elf.
Snowtworf. Read the species entry for half-elves. Really read it. Soak it in. Ask yourself how often it describes half-elves positively, i.e. "half-elves are [X]" as opposed to negatively, i.e. "half-elves are not [X]". Think, for a minute, about their very name. "Half-elf". Half an elf. Only half of a person. Their very name describes them negatively, in terms of what they are not - an elf or a human. That is frankly yet another way Eberron is vastly and categorically superior to Faerun and the Forgotten Realms; there, half-elves have their own specific name - 'Khoravar' - and are considered a people unto themselves rather than the mongrel by-blows of actuial for-real peoples.
Stegodorkus' player asked "Do we really have to have racism in my fantasy escapism?" If you insist on a 'half-elf' stat block which posits that half-elves are the alien, unwanted by-blows of taboo minglings of elven and human bloods (to say nothing of the endless sea of Bad Implications that are half-orcs)? Then yes. At your table the answer is "Yes, we have to have racism in our fantasy escapism." Does that make people who like half-elves, or half-orcs, racist? No. But it means that sometimes you're going to have to tell somebody else that they can't play what they want to play without the in-game world ostracizing, denigrating, and 'Other'ing them for it, and we've had foruteen pages now - and over a hundred pages in long-locked dead threads, by now - explaining why that is not okay for a great many people.
Hookay. A lot to unpack here.
First off. I'm not against the content of the entry itself being changed. I fully expected some changes going in and, so long as it at least makes sense, I'm willing to accept it. The problem isn't that they are making changes to the half-elf or half-orc entry, it's that they're getting rid of it entirely.
Secondly, you are engaging in an extreme, unfair, and frankly rediculous projection with that whole 'half a person' thing. At no point did I posit, suggest, or anything that a half-elf was worth less than a person. I have no clue where you're getting that from.
Not you, the writing of the race description itself. This is not the first time I've heard someone say that the race description is lacking on any sort of actual description of half elves as people but just as lesser, not quite right, others.
I suspect that 99.99% of the people who have ever played a half-elf in any setting, not just D&D, have ever considered them to be worth 'less' as a person becaused of their heritage.
I suspect a higher number than that, but honestly neither of us have any way of knowing that, so maybe let's stop with the percentages yeah? Can we say that it's just bad in general if an RPG is written in a way that hurts the reader?
FOURTHLY... As much as I hate to say it... MAYBE WE DO! If one of my friends was uncomfortable with a minor aspect of my character and approached me to ask nicely I change it, then I'd probably listen. But if I'm playing a half-elf character whose entire plot and a massive chunk of their story is that they were, say, blocked from progressing in their magic academy due to their mixed heritage, and the plot I had already hashed out with the GM involved them trying to start their own academy as a result, and someone comes up to me and tells me I need to change that... because the insensitive, judgemental, racist, jerkbags in my backstory and serving as a huge chunk of my character motivation are being insensitive, judgemental, racist, jerkbags... and the whole point is that they were WRONG and BAD for that... Then I'm sorry but the answer is 'no'.
What you do at your table is different from what WOTC has to think about when publishing something meant for the public. Adding in racial discrimination into your plot when you know your players and what they're comfortable with is fine, including this kind of traumatizing content in a game meant for general audiences is not. That kind of thing should be filtered to make sure the players are signing up for it, rather than being included as a default for everyone.
If someone isn't interested in that and wants to play at a different table, then fine. Don't like horror movies then don't watch them. Don't want racism in your fantasy game don't join one with it in them (even when the point is that it's wrong and needs to be opposed). But then don't go out and demand it get removed or imply that anyone who has it is also approving of it. It's LITERALLY the same thought process as the satanic panic! 'This game has demons in it! IT IS THE WORK OF THE DEVIL AND SEDUCING YOU TO EVIL! BURN IT!' 'But they're the bad guys and the goal is to oppose and defeat them!' 'DEVIL WORSHIP!'
No, I wish people would stop making this comparison because it is entirely wrong. The Satanic Panic was started by people who are in the majority and in power to discriminate against a subculture they disliked. Trying to remove emotional land mines from the writing so more people can safely play the game is entirely different. Also no one actually was calling for this, WOTC did it on their own and showed us that there was a better and less landmine filled way to portray multiracial people. There was no outcry demanding this, stop saying that's what was happening.
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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!
The Satanic Panic had nothing to do with majority, power, or anything of the sort. It was a media hype train fueled by a person (be they pastor, senator, or lunatic) who wanted popularity and power twisting what a subculture was about in order to whip people up into a frenzy by taking things completely out of context if not outright fabricated. People would make up content or take extreme fringe cases and assume that applied to the majority of the group all while not bothering to learn anything about the group itself. As a result the person could say literally anything and people would assume it was true; especially since disagreeing with it would get you set against the group who would assume you were on the extreme position they targeted and opposed. You were either just trying to protect the children from evil influences (the devil) or a baby sacrificing demon worshiper trying to seduce children into devil worship with no in-between ground or ability to reason or even inquire. Remember, had any of these people actually READ the books, they would have realized that pretty much everything was fabricated hysteria. Same thing happened with Harry Potter, Video Games, and that one book made by that woman who claimed her mother did horrific things to her or something (Michelle Remembers I think?). It's happened many times in the past and it will, inevitably happy again multiple times in the future.
Also, this is not an 'emotional landmine', it's not being portrayed as a positive, or anything like that. This is not content meant for children. It's meant for adults who should be more than capable of handling something like this emotionally. And, frankly, I want you to REALLY think about this...
This whole thing, all fifteen pages of it now, is because an argument has been happening over half-elves and half orcs getting their own entry separate from the generic option. Not the content in said entries. Not removing the generic option, lazy as it is, or anything of the sort. Just these two options, options which have a long history with the franchise no less, getting more than rolled into a slap-in-the-face sidebar style option. This is, somehow, constituting an emotional landmine now and possibly an attempt to champion racism.
Snow. You really like the idea of playing an Outsider, someone whom society has forsaken. Someone maltreated because of their mixed blood, denied privlege and station - or at times even basic decency - because they are not of a like with their supposed fellows. To you, that's a really powerful story that appeals strongly to your narrative sense and excites your imagination, makes you wanna get up and play you some D&D. Okay. Cool. Good.
Do you think that people who have had to live that narrative in reality, in their everyday life, for their entire life...might be less enthusiastic about the idea? This isn't some exotic faraway fantasy one is indulging for their fantasy game - this is cold hard reality for a lot of people. They don't see it nearly so romantically as you do. They don't see it as a chivalrous tale of beautiful resistance against unsightly oppression.
5e's not going anywhere. You want your magic academy dropout half-elf, play it. 1DD or otherwise. You want a better system for hybridizing species, leave that feedback the next time the Origins document comes around for playtest. But holy hell man, can we stop pretending that this isn't an actual for-real problem for folks? The solution doesn't apply to you. Cool. Great. It definitely applies to other people. Who are happy to not have to center their entire D&D existence around a Righteous Crusade Against the Unjust anymore. You like that story. They do not. Stop forcing everybody else to play your story, mayhaps?
Snow. You really like the idea of playing an Outsider, someone whom society has forsaken. Someone maltreated because of their mixed blood, denied privlege and station - or at times even basic decency - because they are not of a like with their supposed fellows. To you, that's a really powerful story that appeals strongly to your narrative sense and excites your imagination, makes you wanna get up and play you some D&D. Okay. Cool. Good.
Do you think that people who have had to live that narrative in reality, in their everyday life, for their entire life...might be less enthusiastic about the idea? This isn't some exotic faraway fantasy one is indulging for their fantasy game - this is cold hard reality for a lot of people. They don't see it nearly so romantically as you do. They don't see it as a chivalrous tale of beautiful resistance against unsightly oppression.
5e's not going anywhere. You want your magic academy dropout half-elf, play it. 1DD or otherwise. You want a better system for hybridizing species, leave that feedback the next time the Origins document comes around for playtest. But holy hell man, can we stop pretending that this isn't an actual for-real problem for folks? The solution doesn't apply to you. Cool. Great. It definitely applies to other people. Who are happy to not have to center their entire D&D existence around a Righteous Crusade Against the Unjust anymore. You like that story. They do not. Stop forcing everybody else to play your story, mayhaps?
I don't say this often, but you raise an excellent point.
The number of people I know who come from mixed heritage and actually play humans because they just want to be seen as people... I need more than my just hands to count them.
I'm not interested in seeing this thread go on for another 300 posts, so this is probably the last thing I'll say. I just hope that it can help everyone that is upset with the change be able to come to terms with it a little better. And maybe bring some focus back. Because these changes are likely here to stay. Not just because they are extremely popular (see the first few pages of this thread). But also because the new game design kind of depends on it.
First, WotC is making an effort to remove the problematic baggage of old tropes from their game. Baggage carried over from problematic source material that inspired a lot of earlier books. This is not a new complaint. I can assure you that my own gaming group was wrestling with the morality of these tropes back in the 90s. Based on the lore given to us, we could not find any way that a half orc could be played that WASN'T the result of something horrific, as one example. WotC is aware of this. It's why every version of the game and campaign settings keeps trying to walk it back and find new ways to explain half orcs and half elves that don't sound as bad. WotC is trying to make things better. Whether they are successful or not, or doing it fast enough, is up for debate. There have been some missteps, even very recently. But they are trying. That's a good thing at least.
Some people still want to explore what it's like being an outsider in a world of prejudice. I'm not passing any judgement here. Star Trek famously uses this topic in nearly every version of the show: Spock, Worf, etc. They make an attempt to show these characters as fully realized people, facing unfair treatment because of their birth. Whether it is successful or not is also subjective, but the point is that I think most of the people who like the old lore for half elves and half orcs probably see their characters as something like Spock or Tanis from Dragonlance.
For many other people though, the presence of these tropes presented as fact in the Players Handbook, is a huge turn off. They don't want to play that game. Many deal with these problems enough in everyday life. They don't want it in their fantasy. Some find it unsettling in general. Some just imagined a different world to play in. As I said, this isn't a new thing. And it's a very legitimate complaint. I think we would all like our game to be welcoming to everyone, from every walk of life. (Edit, since we were writing at the same time. See Yurei's post above that explains how important this part is.)
Here's the thing. Even if you don't take into account all of that (important) real world context, WotC is changing the way they write books. From a pure design standpoint. We see it in the Multiverse approach to race lore. They want to write sourcebooks that can apply to ANY campaign as broadly as possible. A half-elf might be a rare and strange sight in Krynn, spoken of in whispers behind their back. But I assure you that no one on the Rock of Bral in Spelljammer is batting an eye at the sight of one. A guy made of slime just rode by on a giant hamster. Nor would they in my own personal campaign. My players are in a kingdom, founded 1000 years ago after a long and terrible conflict, and built on the alliance of the tribes of humans, hill dwarves, and wood elves that banded together in the face of it. It's capital is multicultural and magnificent. 'Half elves' are relatively common there, as are every other combination of ancestry.
WotC needs to write books that cover every kind of campaign. That's what they are trying to do with this next edition of the game. So they start by removing the setting-specific cultural lore. By doing so, the Player's Handbook can work for everyone. It opens up even MORE options. It does not take away anything from anyone. You are still absolutely free to use any lore you want for your setting. And I am free to use any for mine. The only difference now, is that I have actual rules for making mine as fully developed as I wanted. And the books don't try to pigeonhole my 'half elves' and 'half orcs' into a narrow definition that doesn't fit my table or my players.
So they start this UA by stripping away the setting-specific lore and what happens? They realize that every bit of lore for half-elves and half-orcs in 5e is setting-specific. It really is. All of the lore presented in the 5e book is about how these people are forced to straddle two cultures. That's all they tell us about them. But that lore is only true in SOME campaigns. Not even the majority of them at this point. So what does WotC do with this? There is nothing left to use. Because there is no such thing as one single cultural reaction to blended ancestry that is true for every campaign.
Next we look at the mechanical design of the races. The stats and abilities. WotC removed stats from Race and put them in Backgrounds. This is a great change that most people love, or at least accept. We no longer feel the need to tie race and class concepts together, opening up even more possibilities for character design. Even if you don't like it personally, it is the road they are taking. So the half elf was never going to get their +4 total points, any more than humans would get +6 (one in each stat). We can move on from stats.
That leaves abilities. I really encourage everyone to look at the abilities in the 5e Player's Handbook, and those in the UA. A 5e Half-Elf has all of the same abilities as an Elf. After removing stats from the equation, the ONLY difference is that Half-elves get to pick 2 skills, while Elves get Perception specifically. But the UA Elves ALSO get to use the new backgrounds and Feats to get more skills. And they get Spells! So if you wanted to transport your current half-elf from 5e to 1DnD, they would literally have all of the same abilities. Just pick the Elf rules and make them look however you like. Give them the same backstory. Run them in the same world. They would have the same darkvision, charm resistance, trance, everything. And they would pick up some nice spells on top of it all. You have lost nothing.
Half-orcs are nearly the same. Unless you were really attached to the extra crit damage, you basically get the best abilities from the old half-orcs and orcs combined. Some are even more useful now. The only thing they really did get rid of was the problematic language.
When WotC was revising the rules and realized this, they probably had a moment where they went "Huh, look at that..." Why would anyone make a half-elf anymore? If there is no lore to them that isn't setting-specific, and Elves are the same thing just with even more cool abilities? I imagine this is a big reason why they made this change in the end. They saw there was a desire for more character freedom, and they saw there was no longer any mechanical or lore reason to keep the half-elf and half-orc and limit players to only those options. So they opened it up to everyone.
So you can still have the same characters, living the same lives, in the same worlds. But everyone else has a whole host of opportunities and freedoms opened up too. Maybe you wish there were more explicit choices to be made. Maybe you want to mix and match abilities. Well, it's probably not going to happen. Not officially anyways. They just put out Monsters of the Multiverse. It was not designed with this in mind. There are around 50 official player races. That is a lot to balance, and it further restricts introducing new ones down the line. But the good news is that this is only because of things like AL balance, and book page limits. You can totally ask your DM if you can swap some abilities around in your home game. Then you can agree on what is right for your specific game. Both in the lore and the game balance. And who knows, maybe we'll get a big book of character creation options one day.
In the end, I just hope that everyone can agree that we want a good game for everybody. And while changes might be hard sometimes, they are often for the better. Or at least maybe we can at least see the reasoning behind it.
The Satanic Panic had nothing to do with majority, power, or anything of the sort.
Is that so?
It was a media hype train fueled by a person (be they pastor, senator, or lunatic) who wanted popularity and power twisting what a subculture was about in order to whip people up into a frenzy by taking things completely out of context if not outright fabricated.
You just said it wasn't about power or the majority and then you go on to say that it was someone seeking what? Power. By portraying who? A minority subculture. Did you mean to contradict yourself right away?
Also, this is not an 'emotional landmine'
Yes it is. I've already told you that it is and provided citation of people who are not just me who have discomfort about Half Elves and Half Orcs. That you continue to say it is not an issue is really feeling like you're invalidating my feelings and the feelings of other people here who have said directly how this makes us feel.
This whole thing, all fifteen pages of it now, is because an argument has been happening over half-elves and half orcs getting their own entry separate from the generic option.
Yes, it's exactly that. Separating out Half Elves and Half Orcs for their own special mechanical treatment is exactly the thing that is uncomfortable.
Not removing the generic option, lazy as it is, or anything of the sort. Just these two options, options which have a long history with the franchise no less, getting more than rolled into a slap-in-the-face sidebar style option. This is, somehow, constituting an emotional landmine now and possibly an attempt to champion racism.
I don't even know how we got to this point.
Yes it's abundantly clear that you just don't understand the point that we've been making for weeks.
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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!
Maybe they just need to drop the idea that your character has 'race' as part of the buildout entirely. Assign physical traits specific point values based on mechanical impact within the game rules, allow the players to buy X points of traits from a list of them, and call themselves whatever they want to. No more elves, or humans, or tabaxi, or tortles, etc...
That would fix many, many fundamental problems with D&D, but would also likely piss off many traditionalists. (Note: there could still be "elves" and whatnot, narratively, they just wouldn't have strict mechanical definitions. Except when a DM decreed them to.)
Also, D&D's "track record" on mechanical balance, and the game's heavy emphasis on DPS and such, indicates that it would be heavily dominated by min-maxing for specific combat builds. Such is the way of everything in the game.
But it sure would be nice for the game itself to stop asserting so many opinions on what people are "born" to be. It's a tired trope, Gygax's-vision-be-damned. Maybe even make it possible to "learn" those traits through life experience, play, etc.
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The problem here is that I don't think this is one of the things that should be let go of or, well... I'm not sure quite how to say it.
Let's assume the people in favor of the generic option are right. Half elves and half orcs will be just as popular and common without having their own entries. Then you're not 'giving up' anything. Conversely, if I'm right, we're not giving up the generic option (I was never and am not against it), just giving one/two of the possible combinations within it additional attention and... player visibility? Either way we're not 'giving up' anything.
Snowtworf. Read the species entry for half-elves. Really read it. Soak it in. Ask yourself how often it describes half-elves positively, i.e. "half-elves are [X]" as opposed to negatively, i.e. "half-elves are not [X]". Think, for a minute, about their very name. "Half-elf". Half an elf. Only half of a person. Their very name describes them negatively, in terms of what they are not - an elf or a human. That is frankly yet another way Eberron is vastly and categorically superior to Faerun and the Forgotten Realms; there, half-elves have their own specific name - 'Khoravar' - and are considered a people unto themselves rather than the mongrel by-blows of actuial for-real peoples.
Stegodorkus' player asked "Do we really have to have racism in my fantasy escapism?" If you insist on a 'half-elf' stat block which posits that half-elves are the alien, unwanted by-blows of taboo minglings of elven and human bloods (to say nothing of the endless sea of Bad Implications that are half-orcs)? Then yes. At your table the answer is "Yes, we have to have racism in our fantasy escapism." Does that make people who like half-elves, or half-orcs, racist? No. But it means that sometimes you're going to have to tell somebody else that they can't play what they want to play without the in-game world ostracizing, denigrating, and 'Other'ing them for it, and we've had foruteen pages now - and over a hundred pages in long-locked dead threads, by now - explaining why that is not okay for a great many people.
Please do not contact or message me.
Hookay. A lot to unpack here.
First off. I'm not against the content of the entry itself being changed. I fully expected some changes going in and, so long as it at least makes sense, I'm willing to accept it. The problem isn't that they are making changes to the half-elf or half-orc entry, it's that they're getting rid of it entirely.
Secondly, you are engaging in an extreme, unfair, and frankly rediculous projection with that whole 'half a person' thing. At no point did I posit, suggest, or anything that a half-elf was worth less than a person. I have no clue where you're getting that from. I suspect that 99.99% of the people who have ever played a half-elf in any setting, not just D&D, have ever considered them to be worth 'less' as a person becaused of their heritage. Instead it sounds like you heard ONE person (if even that. More likely a story about one person) use the term in a negative manner and are now expanding that to include EVERYONE as WELL as taking a stance that opposition to you equates to support for that extreme position. That's not only wrong, that's not an argument, and not even relevant to what's going on in the slightest.
Thirdly, what term are we even supposed to USE then? I get that a 'half elf' may no longer be sufficient given it being opened up and a 'half-elf' being as valid a term for a half elf half human as it is for a half elf half orc, but given the vast amount of variety I don't think it's unfair to refer to a very specific, storied, and frankly BROAD set-up by the name commonly used. What? When I boot up Tales of Symphonia am I suddenly not allowed to refer to Raine/Genis as half-elves because it might offend someone in D&D?
FOURTHLY... As much as I hate to say it... MAYBE WE DO! If one of my friends was uncomfortable with a minor aspect of my character and approached me to ask nicely I change it, then I'd probably listen. But if I'm playing a half-elf character whose entire plot and a massive chunk of their story is that they were, say, blocked from progressing in their magic academy due to their mixed heritage, and the plot I had already hashed out with the GM involved them trying to start their own academy as a result, and someone comes up to me and tells me I need to change that... because the insensitive, judgemental, racist, jerkbags in my backstory and serving as a huge chunk of my character motivation are being insensitive, judgemental, racist, jerkbags... and the whole point is that they were WRONG and BAD for that... Then I'm sorry but the answer is 'no'.
Do we HAVE to have stuff like that in every game? No. Of course not. But to act like it doesn't hold merit as a story device (Just look at games like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Tales of Symphonia, Xenoblade Chronicles, and Divinity: OS2 for ones I played recently off the top of my head) especially when part of the whole point of the inclusion is that it's a negative, wrong, and bad thing to do and the goal is to defy and oppose it. Like, seriously, how many games out there have 'the races need to oppose the BBEG but they all dislike/hate each other and don't really get along and it's up to the main hero to unite them, undo years of racial hate, and possibly form a party made up of representatives of each race to defeat the BBEG' as their main plot?
If someone isn't interested in that and wants to play at a different table, then fine. Don't like horror movies then don't watch them. Don't want racism in your fantasy game don't join one with it in them (even when the point is that it's wrong and needs to be opposed). But then don't go out and demand it get removed or imply that anyone who has it is also approving of it. It's LITERALLY the same thought process as the satanic panic! 'This game has demons in it! IT IS THE WORK OF THE DEVIL AND SEDUCING YOU TO EVIL! BURN IT!' 'But they're the bad guys and the goal is to oppose and defeat them!' 'DEVIL WORSHIP!'
I'm sorry that this 'great many people' will never be able to enjoy games like Tales of Symphonia or Dragon Age, but that's their choice, and I don't think that giving half-elves and half-orcs their own, separate and distinct racial entires instead of being rolled into a generic option, supports that regardless.
It doesn’t make sense to give them their own racial entries. The game will only give features by race now. What feature would a half orc have that an orc wouldn’t? What feature would a half elf have that an elf wouldn’t? The only thing mixed races would logically have is mixed features, but that would be a can of worms giving players access to blend racial features however they choose. Half elf stats don’t make sense in 5e, but they were really good so I never complained. Moving forward it is better to get rid of mixed race stats. Orcs being in the PHB means you haven’t lost access to playing half orc, and half elf is no longer taking up space allowing them to include the Ardent in this UA. My hope is they ditch the Ardent and just make Aasimar the other PHB race.
To be honest, I'm not fussed about the presence of Half-Elves (or Half-Xs). It really wouldn't bother me if they decided that they didn't want to support their presence anymore. At the worst, we have 5e stats, but even if we didn't...it wouldn't bother me if they were incompatible and never updated to work in 1D&D. It wouldn't bother me if they change the lore to make people comfortable. Go for it.
What has annoyed me is the attitude behind it. Specifically, a non-mechanic being masqueraded as an awesome system. I've never seen D&S stuff as binding. If I don't like something...chuck it out. If I like it I add it in. When WotC releases crunchy content like a.new subclass, a new race, whatever, I see it as them providing content that has been playtested and vetted to be able to be played without breaking my game or the character. Buying the Gloomstalker isn't permission to play a cooler Ranger that works in darkness. It's a construct that is offered to me so I don't have to sit there and test it myself because I've paid them to try it out for me.
The new "system" for half races is nothing new like that it. It's literally taking what we've been doing since forever, reskinning things, and then pretending that it's a new mechanic. No, it's worse than that. It's giving us permission to use it. That's like...me giving you permission to use your own bathroom. The attitude stinks.
I'd rather they just dropped the idea of half races. If they want to bring [actual] mechanics for creating them, that's fine. If they want to do bespoke ones like in 5e, that's fine. If they want to drop them, that's fine. But the way they did it was giving permission to do something that's our right anyway. I could always have taken an Dwarf, called him a Half-Dwarf, and played it, no need for this permission to do it.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
They have to give permission because of things like Adventure’s League, Rule mongers, and new DMs. Also this isn’t a new rule about half races. It has existed for every other half race except Elf and Orc. If you wanted to be a half dwarf you followed the exact rules presented in this UA. So technically they didn’t drop half races they are just forcing those 2 to follow the same mechanics as any other mixed race. Also I can’t find this
They didn't have to do anything. They could have put in proper mechanics. They could have dropped them. You claim that there are mechanics for the other mixed races, which I don't recall seeing, then they didn't need to come out with this at all. Just refer back to those alleged rules.
New DMs need to learn that this is their game, not WotC's. Rule mongers are going to rule mongers. Adding more rules saying you can't do stuff isn't going to help. If WotC wants mixed races in, then do it properly. If they're ambivalent or want them out, then drop them. Adding express permission to stray from RAW in a specific circumstance just makes things worse for the aforementioned two groups, because by giving express permission to reskin in a specific circumstances, the new DM will logically assume that if express permission is given in this circumstance, then when it's not given, it is not permitted. Likewise, "rule mongers" as you call them will apply the same logic to the same end to beat you over the head with.
Permission is not something that should be given, because it is already in the hands of those who play the game.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
"Do it properly" is entirely subjective. There's no one way to do this.
That's not an answer though. Just because a right answer is subjective doesn't mean you should just lazily churn out something that, likewise, some people are not happy with. I know Yurei said my stuff wasn't good enough, but I feel like I put more thought into that entry, which I am not getting paid for and did solely because I wanted to at least try to find a solution to this now 14 page topic, than WotC did with their 'answer'.
There are ways to do improperly, and "we give you permission to reskin things" is one of them. There are numerous ways that would have been a valid way of dealing with half races in a supportive manner (including just dropping the concept, or not supporting it). That wasn't one of them.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Maybe they just need to drop the idea that your character has 'race' as part of the buildout entirely. Assign physical traits specific point values based on mechanical impact within the game rules, allow the players to buy X points of traits from a list of them, and call themselves whatever they want to. No more elves, or humans, or tabaxi, or tortles, etc...
Perhaps by the book telling them?
Imagine this: "As with the rest of the rules, remember that you can change this."
If something is important, you usually want to say it more than once.
I attempted to pull up the mechanics for other mixed races and couldn’t find them. I realized it’s because they aren’t written. They are from a Jeremy Crawford interview. That is why they are being written out now. You were correct they don’t actually exist beyond something he said. I couldn’t even find it written in sage advice. So it really was less of a mechanic and more of an idea he had on how to handle it. Now they are pushing toward making it a mechanic.
As far as giving permission have you ever read the DMG? They give all kinds of permission. There is also a really good Jeremy Crawford interview were he talks about giving DMs permission. He said if they found often if they didn’t say you could then DMs and players assumed you couldn’t.
If ability scores are no longer tied to race, then half races serve no logical purpose. It’s a RP thing at that point unless being a half race grants unique features. Even then it is easier to create one rule about combining two races than it is to make a half elf and half orc features stats, especially since they wouldn’t have any new features just a combination of their parent’s features. I fear allowing players to blend racial features is a min/maxers wet dream, but it could solve your gripe and save WotC a page in the PHB since they don’t have to describe the culture of a half elf.
Not you, the writing of the race description itself. This is not the first time I've heard someone say that the race description is lacking on any sort of actual description of half elves as people but just as lesser, not quite right, others.
I suspect a higher number than that, but honestly neither of us have any way of knowing that, so maybe let's stop with the percentages yeah? Can we say that it's just bad in general if an RPG is written in a way that hurts the reader?
What you do at your table is different from what WOTC has to think about when publishing something meant for the public. Adding in racial discrimination into your plot when you know your players and what they're comfortable with is fine, including this kind of traumatizing content in a game meant for general audiences is not. That kind of thing should be filtered to make sure the players are signing up for it, rather than being included as a default for everyone.
No, I wish people would stop making this comparison because it is entirely wrong. The Satanic Panic was started by people who are in the majority and in power to discriminate against a subculture they disliked. Trying to remove emotional land mines from the writing so more people can safely play the game is entirely different. Also no one actually was calling for this, WOTC did it on their own and showed us that there was a better and less landmine filled way to portray multiracial people. There was no outcry demanding this, stop saying that's what was happening.
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!
The Satanic Panic had nothing to do with majority, power, or anything of the sort. It was a media hype train fueled by a person (be they pastor, senator, or lunatic) who wanted popularity and power twisting what a subculture was about in order to whip people up into a frenzy by taking things completely out of context if not outright fabricated. People would make up content or take extreme fringe cases and assume that applied to the majority of the group all while not bothering to learn anything about the group itself. As a result the person could say literally anything and people would assume it was true; especially since disagreeing with it would get you set against the group who would assume you were on the extreme position they targeted and opposed. You were either just trying to protect the children from evil influences (the devil) or a baby sacrificing demon worshiper trying to seduce children into devil worship with no in-between ground or ability to reason or even inquire. Remember, had any of these people actually READ the books, they would have realized that pretty much everything was fabricated hysteria. Same thing happened with Harry Potter, Video Games, and that one book made by that woman who claimed her mother did horrific things to her or something (Michelle Remembers I think?). It's happened many times in the past and it will, inevitably happy again multiple times in the future.
Also, this is not an 'emotional landmine', it's not being portrayed as a positive, or anything like that. This is not content meant for children. It's meant for adults who should be more than capable of handling something like this emotionally. And, frankly, I want you to REALLY think about this...
This whole thing, all fifteen pages of it now, is because an argument has been happening over half-elves and half orcs getting their own entry separate from the generic option. Not the content in said entries. Not removing the generic option, lazy as it is, or anything of the sort. Just these two options, options which have a long history with the franchise no less, getting more than rolled into a slap-in-the-face sidebar style option. This is, somehow, constituting an emotional landmine now and possibly an attempt to champion racism.
I don't even know how we got to this point.
Sigh.
OTL.
Snow. You really like the idea of playing an Outsider, someone whom society has forsaken. Someone maltreated because of their mixed blood, denied privlege and station - or at times even basic decency - because they are not of a like with their supposed fellows. To you, that's a really powerful story that appeals strongly to your narrative sense and excites your imagination, makes you wanna get up and play you some D&D. Okay. Cool. Good.
Do you think that people who have had to live that narrative in reality, in their everyday life, for their entire life...might be less enthusiastic about the idea? This isn't some exotic faraway fantasy one is indulging for their fantasy game - this is cold hard reality for a lot of people. They don't see it nearly so romantically as you do. They don't see it as a chivalrous tale of beautiful resistance against unsightly oppression.
5e's not going anywhere. You want your magic academy dropout half-elf, play it. 1DD or otherwise. You want a better system for hybridizing species, leave that feedback the next time the Origins document comes around for playtest. But holy hell man, can we stop pretending that this isn't an actual for-real problem for folks? The solution doesn't apply to you. Cool. Great. It definitely applies to other people. Who are happy to not have to center their entire D&D existence around a Righteous Crusade Against the Unjust anymore. You like that story. They do not. Stop forcing everybody else to play your story, mayhaps?
Please do not contact or message me.
I don't say this often, but you raise an excellent point.
The number of people I know who come from mixed heritage and actually play humans because they just want to be seen as people... I need more than my just hands to count them.
I'm not interested in seeing this thread go on for another 300 posts, so this is probably the last thing I'll say. I just hope that it can help everyone that is upset with the change be able to come to terms with it a little better. And maybe bring some focus back. Because these changes are likely here to stay. Not just because they are extremely popular (see the first few pages of this thread). But also because the new game design kind of depends on it.
First, WotC is making an effort to remove the problematic baggage of old tropes from their game. Baggage carried over from problematic source material that inspired a lot of earlier books. This is not a new complaint. I can assure you that my own gaming group was wrestling with the morality of these tropes back in the 90s. Based on the lore given to us, we could not find any way that a half orc could be played that WASN'T the result of something horrific, as one example. WotC is aware of this. It's why every version of the game and campaign settings keeps trying to walk it back and find new ways to explain half orcs and half elves that don't sound as bad. WotC is trying to make things better. Whether they are successful or not, or doing it fast enough, is up for debate. There have been some missteps, even very recently. But they are trying. That's a good thing at least.
Some people still want to explore what it's like being an outsider in a world of prejudice. I'm not passing any judgement here. Star Trek famously uses this topic in nearly every version of the show: Spock, Worf, etc. They make an attempt to show these characters as fully realized people, facing unfair treatment because of their birth. Whether it is successful or not is also subjective, but the point is that I think most of the people who like the old lore for half elves and half orcs probably see their characters as something like Spock or Tanis from Dragonlance.
For many other people though, the presence of these tropes presented as fact in the Players Handbook, is a huge turn off. They don't want to play that game. Many deal with these problems enough in everyday life. They don't want it in their fantasy. Some find it unsettling in general. Some just imagined a different world to play in. As I said, this isn't a new thing. And it's a very legitimate complaint. I think we would all like our game to be welcoming to everyone, from every walk of life. (Edit, since we were writing at the same time. See Yurei's post above that explains how important this part is.)
Here's the thing. Even if you don't take into account all of that (important) real world context, WotC is changing the way they write books. From a pure design standpoint. We see it in the Multiverse approach to race lore. They want to write sourcebooks that can apply to ANY campaign as broadly as possible. A half-elf might be a rare and strange sight in Krynn, spoken of in whispers behind their back. But I assure you that no one on the Rock of Bral in Spelljammer is batting an eye at the sight of one. A guy made of slime just rode by on a giant hamster. Nor would they in my own personal campaign. My players are in a kingdom, founded 1000 years ago after a long and terrible conflict, and built on the alliance of the tribes of humans, hill dwarves, and wood elves that banded together in the face of it. It's capital is multicultural and magnificent. 'Half elves' are relatively common there, as are every other combination of ancestry.
WotC needs to write books that cover every kind of campaign. That's what they are trying to do with this next edition of the game. So they start by removing the setting-specific cultural lore. By doing so, the Player's Handbook can work for everyone. It opens up even MORE options. It does not take away anything from anyone. You are still absolutely free to use any lore you want for your setting. And I am free to use any for mine. The only difference now, is that I have actual rules for making mine as fully developed as I wanted. And the books don't try to pigeonhole my 'half elves' and 'half orcs' into a narrow definition that doesn't fit my table or my players.
So they start this UA by stripping away the setting-specific lore and what happens? They realize that every bit of lore for half-elves and half-orcs in 5e is setting-specific. It really is. All of the lore presented in the 5e book is about how these people are forced to straddle two cultures. That's all they tell us about them. But that lore is only true in SOME campaigns. Not even the majority of them at this point. So what does WotC do with this? There is nothing left to use. Because there is no such thing as one single cultural reaction to blended ancestry that is true for every campaign.
Next we look at the mechanical design of the races. The stats and abilities. WotC removed stats from Race and put them in Backgrounds. This is a great change that most people love, or at least accept. We no longer feel the need to tie race and class concepts together, opening up even more possibilities for character design. Even if you don't like it personally, it is the road they are taking. So the half elf was never going to get their +4 total points, any more than humans would get +6 (one in each stat). We can move on from stats.
That leaves abilities. I really encourage everyone to look at the abilities in the 5e Player's Handbook, and those in the UA. A 5e Half-Elf has all of the same abilities as an Elf. After removing stats from the equation, the ONLY difference is that Half-elves get to pick 2 skills, while Elves get Perception specifically. But the UA Elves ALSO get to use the new backgrounds and Feats to get more skills. And they get Spells! So if you wanted to transport your current half-elf from 5e to 1DnD, they would literally have all of the same abilities. Just pick the Elf rules and make them look however you like. Give them the same backstory. Run them in the same world. They would have the same darkvision, charm resistance, trance, everything. And they would pick up some nice spells on top of it all. You have lost nothing.
Half-orcs are nearly the same. Unless you were really attached to the extra crit damage, you basically get the best abilities from the old half-orcs and orcs combined. Some are even more useful now. The only thing they really did get rid of was the problematic language.
When WotC was revising the rules and realized this, they probably had a moment where they went "Huh, look at that..." Why would anyone make a half-elf anymore? If there is no lore to them that isn't setting-specific, and Elves are the same thing just with even more cool abilities? I imagine this is a big reason why they made this change in the end. They saw there was a desire for more character freedom, and they saw there was no longer any mechanical or lore reason to keep the half-elf and half-orc and limit players to only those options. So they opened it up to everyone.
So you can still have the same characters, living the same lives, in the same worlds. But everyone else has a whole host of opportunities and freedoms opened up too. Maybe you wish there were more explicit choices to be made. Maybe you want to mix and match abilities. Well, it's probably not going to happen. Not officially anyways. They just put out Monsters of the Multiverse. It was not designed with this in mind. There are around 50 official player races. That is a lot to balance, and it further restricts introducing new ones down the line. But the good news is that this is only because of things like AL balance, and book page limits. You can totally ask your DM if you can swap some abilities around in your home game. Then you can agree on what is right for your specific game. Both in the lore and the game balance. And who knows, maybe we'll get a big book of character creation options one day.
In the end, I just hope that everyone can agree that we want a good game for everybody. And while changes might be hard sometimes, they are often for the better. Or at least maybe we can at least see the reasoning behind it.
Is that so?
You just said it wasn't about power or the majority and then you go on to say that it was someone seeking what? Power. By portraying who? A minority subculture. Did you mean to contradict yourself right away?
Yes it is. I've already told you that it is and provided citation of people who are not just me who have discomfort about Half Elves and Half Orcs. That you continue to say it is not an issue is really feeling like you're invalidating my feelings and the feelings of other people here who have said directly how this makes us feel.
Yes, it's exactly that. Separating out Half Elves and Half Orcs for their own special mechanical treatment is exactly the thing that is uncomfortable.
Yes it's abundantly clear that you just don't understand the point that we've been making for weeks.
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 would fix many, many fundamental problems with D&D, but would also likely piss off many traditionalists. (Note: there could still be "elves" and whatnot, narratively, they just wouldn't have strict mechanical definitions. Except when a DM decreed them to.)
Also, D&D's "track record" on mechanical balance, and the game's heavy emphasis on DPS and such, indicates that it would be heavily dominated by min-maxing for specific combat builds. Such is the way of everything in the game.
But it sure would be nice for the game itself to stop asserting so many opinions on what people are "born" to be. It's a tired trope, Gygax's-vision-be-damned. Maybe even make it possible to "learn" those traits through life experience, play, etc.