In fact, if time has proven anything, it's that players (and authors too) are often drawn to characters who are outsiders. That's a big part of why these character options are consistently popular.
I, too, have always been drawn to Half Elves and their lore. But I am also very pleased with this direction for representing biracial and multiracial characters. You don't lose those stories, and you get the space to tell other stories as well. And it's done in a way that acknowledges that multiracial people are people and not weird and inherently distinct others.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Not only that, but both subraces are among the most popular of all DND player choices, period. This is a verifiable fact. They have both been an option in DND since virtually the beginning. Whether or not you think they are stupidly designed or nonsensical is, to be candid, quite beside the point. There is overriding precedent.
Finally, the fact that there isn't a unified half-elven or half-orc "people" in most settings doesn't mean that they are unimportant or an afterthought. In fact, if time has proven anything, it's that players (and authors too) are often drawn to characters who are outsiders. That's a big part of why these character options are consistently popular.
As soon as this Pandora's box is open, there will inevitably emerge the optimized master race, and it will be super popular, I guarantee that. And that's all there is to it. People want raw power through optimization. Same reason half-elves are popular - they're like elves, but mechanically better.
>>There is literally only one setting that does anything fairly big with Half-Elves and Half-Orcs, and that's Eberron. That's it.
Bro. Did you not read *any* of the DND novels when you were in middle school?
I read two of the Dragonlance Trilogies and 9ish of the Drizzt books. In Dragonlance, Half-Elves are extremely rare and you basically only ever see one in the main stories. On Toril, they also don't have any major cultures or influence.
Not only that, but both subraces are among the most popular of all DND player choices, period. This is a verifiable fact. They have both been an option in DND since virtually the beginning. Whether or not you think they are stupidly designed or nonsensical is, to be candid, quite beside the point. There is overriding precedent.
I don't care if they're popular or not. They're still playable. They're just not considered "special" in comparison to the other half-races anymore.
Finally, the fact that there isn't a unified half-elven or half-orc "people" in most settings doesn't mean that they are unimportant or an afterthought. In fact, if time has proven anything, it's that players (and authors too) are often drawn to characters who are outsiders. That's a big part of why these character options are consistently popular.
"People liking the race means that they aren't an afterthought in the worlds that they're included in" is an extremely dumb argument. Halflings are barely a part of most D&D settings, with their typical identity being "just hobbits with some weird kender/leprechaun stuff added on for no reason". They're unimportant and an afterthought to most worlds that they're a part of (except Dark Sun and Eberron), but they're still a pretty popular race (because tradition and nostalgia for Lord of the Rings, mainly).
Things can be extremely popular and poorly thought out/"afterthoughts". Half-Elves definitely are both in a lot of worlds.
As soon as this Pandora's box is open, there will inevitably emerge the optimized master race, and it will be super popular, I guarantee that. And that's all there is to it. People want raw power through optimization. Same reason half-elves are popular - they're like elves, but mechanically better.
Edgy outsider trope? Lazy writing.
Not actually true. The sad reality is that, as many games have shown, no matter what options you provide the playerbase they will be heavily inclined towards the 'pretty/sexy' one followed by 'generic human'. I remember a short while back there was a huge outrage because BG3 had it's developers release an amalgomation of everyone's character and it was... the most generic white guy possible. (Outrage happened because people weren't happy about being spied on, but that's entirely unrelated all-together). D&D itself released a summary of 1,000 randomly selected characters a while back (2018 I think?) and human was the most popular followed by elf and half-elf. In WoW the Horde are the most popular faction but the most populous race is Blood Elf, both the most 'human-like' (admittably debatable given the forsaken) and the 'prettiest' Horde race. On the Alliance side Night Elves and Humans were the most popular. In XIV Female Miqo'te and Au-Ra utterly dominate the playerbase leaving all other racial choices in the dust. While I'm not 100% certain, I suspect this will hold true for almost any game out there that isn't competative. Given a choice people will opt for the 'pretty/sexy' race followed by generic human. I suspect that the 'optimal' race will only matter to powergamers unless they have a racial so utterly broken that even casual players can't deny it's OP'ness. Even then the pretty/sexy race will likely still be the most popular; just not overwhelmingly so.
I, too, have always been drawn to Half Elves and their lore. But I am also very pleased with this direction for representing biracial and multiracial characters. You don't lose those stories, and you get the space to tell other stories as well. And it's done in a way that acknowledges that multiracial people are people and not weird and inherently distinct others.
Okay. First off... No one is taking the representation away. I'm not arguing that we should nuke the generic option and only have half-elves or something. If you want to play a half-goliath, half-Yuan Ti, you can and I won't have a problem with that. Or at least the question of if a child between the two races is possible/viable would be a whole different and unrelated can of worms that I'm pretty sure most people are happy not discussing. I'm saying that rolling these two races into the generic option seems like a terrible and misguided decision that's going to do nothing but hurt the number of people playing half-elves as they'll lose a lot of their distinctiveness, uniqueness, and, well, everything. In return we will likely see people just opting to... not... touch the generic option or, if they do, they won't be 'delving deep' into it and just picking half-elf/half-orc and not bothering one bit with exploring other options.
This isn't about what's right or wrong morally. This is about what people will DO and how they will react. If half-elf and half-orc had been set apart with the generic option being included I wouldn't have batted an eye. But I can see exactly what will happen here. They'll be folded into the generic option and, instead of people using it, they'll just go pure elf/human instead or, if they do mix them, it will be basically 'I want to be a human but have the elves dark vision' or 'I want to be an elf, but the free feat from variant human is too sexy to pass up'. You likely won't get half-elves, you'll get humans with pointy ears/elves with rounded ears. Or, worse, you'll get people who want the orc racials but don't want to be 'ugly' and will be a 'half-orc' which is just generic white guy Joe but with the orc abilities.
As-is this is a very poorly worded, written, and designed concept that needs more time in the oven and removing distinctive half-races won't, somehow, fix the problem. It will result in people either ignoring it completely or using the half-race option to be a generic human/whatever race, but with other races racial ability. If you want diversity, this is going to backfire horribly.
Not actually true. The sad reality is that, as many games have shown, no matter what options you provide the playerbase they will be heavily inclined towards the 'pretty/sexy' one followed by 'generic human'. I remember a short while back there was a huge outrage because BG3 had it's developers release an amalgomation of everyone's character and it was... the most generic white guy possible. (Outrage happened because people weren't happy about being spied on, but that's entirely unrelated all-together). D&D itself released a summary of 1,000 randomly selected characters a while back (2018 I think?) and human was the most popular followed by elf and half-elf. In WoW the Horde are the most popular faction but the most populous race is Blood Elf, both the most 'human-like' (admittably debatable given the forsaken) and the 'prettiest' Horde race. On the Alliance side Night Elves and Humans were the most popular. In XIV Female Miqo'te and Au-Ra utterly dominate the playerbase leaving all other racial choices in the dust. While I'm not 100% certain, I suspect this will hold true for almost any game out there that isn't competative. Given a choice people will opt for the 'pretty/sexy' race followed by generic human. I suspect that the 'optimal' race will only matter to powergamers unless they have a racial so utterly broken that even casual players can't deny it's OP'ness. Even then the pretty/sexy race will likely still be the most popular; just not overwhelmingly so.
Well, human is obviously popular because it's easy to associate oneself with a human protagonist. As for "sexy" races, the matter of appearance is now completely up to players. You can play a half-elf that looks like anything between human and elf with no strict regulations. Elven unearthly beauty, human big boobs. Easy. Just not the cherry-picked stats.
>>So I gave you a direct account from literally a previous edition as proof that it not "just now" which I think is relevant.
And I'm telling you, again, that your single example is anecdotal and therefore not compelling.
>>And how am I doing that, exactly? I'm telling you how I and other people feel. >>That is direct first hand evidence of how those two races made us uncomfortable.
And there is that "us" again. I'm sure that people are capable of expressing their opinions without your assistance.
>>Like someone already pointed out, portraying biracial people as inherently distinct races with mechanical differences is othering to people who are actually biracial.
Well what a happy coincidence. That's very kind of you, but what makes you think anyone would *want* you to speak for them? What makes you think anyone would be offended at all? Don't answer; we'll come back to that.
DND is not real life. I think we can draw distinction between how we, as actual humans in the real world, can and should view and treat each other vs. how imaginary and vastly different fantasy races, most of whom should not physically or biologically be able to interbreed with each other AT ALL, somehow end up with viable offspring anyway.
Taking offense over the idea that such offspring might have unique qualities (which of course they would), IN A GAME, is... I don't know. It seems kind of trivial. That's just my take, but hey, what do I know? I could be wrong.
>>You don't get to dictate whether or not it is sensible, that is not your place.
I thought we'd established that we don't need an opinion disclaimer at the start of every statement. And frankly, it's not your place to dictate either, yet you keep doing it while unironically claiming to speak for others. I don't doubt that your heart is in the right place, but I'm here to tell you that you really shouldn't be speaking for anyone but yourself. After all, I just want to keep my Half-Elf and Half-Orc. That's it. They are important to me. And also... maybe let's not do the whole passive-aggressive, "oh I'm just speaking up for people who might be offended" thing. It's so gauche. Speaking only for myself, if I'm offended, I'll let you know, believe me. That is not your place.
Otherwise, you can have my +2 CHA half-elf Paladin when you pry her from my cold dead hands.
Well, the good news is you can still play that in the new version and literally nobody is stopping you.
Unless the DM is running the new version. Or I'm at an official event. Or participating in organized play. But yeah, other than all those people who would stop me, I should be good.
I think that's a good thing those races that were weird legacy edge cases are gone as we knew them BUT I don't think the playtest properly addresses people that want to play a multiracial character yet.
For me race choices should be significant enough to provide players with additional roleplay and gameplay opportunity than just a re-skinned elf or orc that was always available to character creation, I would feel the same if multiclass was just using one class' rules and another class' visual appearance.
I think they can do better without making race selection a nightmare, maybe an option to swap one of the feature from each races (would probably require some hierarchy) and hybrid races would already feel way more unique.
On a side node I feel like it puts tieflings in a weird spot as they are often considered as some sort of hybrid humans.
This isn't about what's right or wrong morally. This is about what people will DO and how they will react.
Interesting distinction. Not sure I get it, but moving on.
But I can see exactly what will happen here. They'll be folded into the generic option and, instead of people using it, they'll just go pure elf/human instead or, if they do mix them, it will be basically 'I want to be a human but have the elves dark vision' or 'I want to be an elf, but the free feat from variant human is too sexy to pass up'. You likely won't get half-elves, you'll get humans with pointy ears/elves with rounded ears. Or, worse, you'll get people who want the orc racials but don't want to be 'ugly' and will be a 'half-orc' which is just generic white guy Joe but with the orc abilities.
Yeah, of course you will. How do I know? Because you still got that with the regular halfsies rules. At my own games, both the half elf and the half orc characters who showed up (played by different players, also) were selected specifically for their mechanics, and treated as if they were simply an elf and an orc respectively.
Could it be that players by and large don't care about the halfsies lore, and the only reason these races have such good metrics is that they're mechanically good? Is it possible that your opinion is the minority one?
On a side node I feel like it puts tieflings in a weird spot as they are often considered as some sort of hybrid humans.
Tieflings need a real diversification push. By their lore, there's no reason they should all be human-based. Elf tieflings, halfling tieflings, etc all make perfect sense but you don't see them. They also need to make it super clear, if it's supposed to be its own distinct race, that they're really seriously different from birth. Idk, tieflings are weird. Aasimar are weirder though because they aren't even crayon colored. I feel like you'd never even know someone was an aasimar if they didn't tell you.
>>There is literally only one setting that does anything fairly big with Half-Elves and Half-Orcs, and that's Eberron. That's it.
Bro. Did you not read *any* of the DND novels when you were in middle school?
Speaking as someone who read rather a lot of them way back when, my entire recollection of half-elves and -orcs in them was Tanis in the original Dragonlance books. Are there more, somewhere? I'm sure there are, but there's a lot of D&D novels, and, frankly, most of them are mediocre.
Not only that, but both subraces are among the most popular of all DND player choices, period. This is a verifiable fact. They have both been an option in DND since virtually the beginning. Whether or not you think they are stupidly designed or nonsensical is, to be candid, quite beside the point. There is overriding precedent.
I'm pretty sure they were in AD&D 1 solely for shameless Tolkien-ripping-off reasons.
Finally, the fact that there isn't a unified half-elven or half-orc "people" in most settings doesn't mean that they are unimportant or an afterthought. In fact, if time has proven anything, it's that players (and authors too) are often drawn to characters who are outsiders. That's a big part of why these character options are consistently popular.
Are they popular because of the special allure of playing somebody who's something of an outsider, or is it because half-elf gets you +2 charisma and you don't want to play a tiefling? (And you get two freely-placable other stat bumps to boot, something nobody else has.) It's certainly why my first 5e character was a half-elf: that character's racial identity was "warlock".
And I'm pretty sure half-orcs are popular because people want to play actual orcs, and that's the closest thing in the PHB.
With the new way of doing things, people can play human/orc or human/elf if it fits their concept, not because it gets them the most plusses.
We're never going to be done with this fight, are we?
Color me as a person who, in the vacuum of my own brain, wishes that mixed-species characters could mingle the traits of their parent species. Except I can in fact do that, provided I can get my DM to buy in on a homebrew mixing of species. Is it official? No, and honestly there's a good argument to be made that it shouldn't be. Unlike some, I'm going to choose to believe people who tell me that mixed-species characters being 'Other' from their parents/the population at large is uncomfortable for them. Their appreciation for the new rule given in Origins playtest is as valid as my gut feeling that it feels anemic and inadequate, and the onus is on me to invent a solution for myself, not on them to suffer discomfort so I can be happier.
The easy fix is to encourage DMs to allow homebrew modification where and as it makes sense, perhaps with some guidelines on how to do so, but to otherwise state "most hybrid/mixed-heritage/multiracial characters use the characteristics of one of their parent species, but with an appearance chosen by their player." Yes, that's throwing it to homebrew and people hate doing that, DMs absolutely DETEST being encouraged to allow their players to muck with shit like that, but there's not really an 'Official Choice' that works better. I can brew up my insane tiffle/centaur mixed-species character and tune her traits exactly how I want them with whatever input the DM chooses to give*, and other folks can play a half-and-half based on the stats of their favorite and the appearance they want without censure or weirdness.
"But Rei, I can't do homebrew at conventions or hobby-shop tables or stuff!" Correct. You can't. Save your tiffle/centaur faend hybrid things for home games where you're allowed to really wallow in the hybridization and play Normie Stuff at limited-play tables. You can do it. Not every table need allow every possible thing, and playing that sort of nonsense at a convention game is entirely missing the point of "convention game" anyways.
*
I'm actually pretty proud of Manadh, even if she's utterly blasphemous and overtuned as **** for most games. The DM for the game she's aimed at likes souped-up, overcharged species blocks though, and gave me permission to go a little wild. So she's set up as follows, since one of the advantages of "homebrew your own species block" means you can tune the species to exactly what your specific character needs.
Manadh's CenTiefling Stat Block: ***** Centieflings - sometimes - share a certain blend of traits from their infeynal heritage.
Ability Score Increase
Your Intelligence score increases by 1, and your Charisma score increases by 2.
Age
As both a tiffle and a hoss, with fey and infernal bloodlines mixed in your veins, you don't really know how long you'll live. But you matured only about half as quickly as a typical human, so you're expecting to see quite a few more years yet. You're young, scrappy and hungry and you're not throwing away your shot.
Size
You're a fairly compact sort for someone with a horse butt. Your tiffle bits are about human-sized and your hoss bits are more like 'pony' than 'courser'. Your size is Medium.
Speed
Your base walking speed is 40 feet.
Darkvision
Thanks to your infeynal heritage, you have superior vision in dark and dim conditions. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can’t discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.
Equine Build
You count as one size larger when determining your carrying capacity and the weight you can push or drag.
In addition, any climb that requires hands and feet is especially difficult for you because of your equine legs. When you make such a climb, each foot of movement costs you 4 extra feet instead of the normal 1 extra foot.
Infeynal Legacy
Your bloodlines are both rich in magic, and you are no exception. You know the thaumaturgy cantrip. When you reach 3rd level, you can cast hellish rebuke as a 2nd-level spell once with this trait and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. When you reach 5th level, you can cast Nathair's Mischief once with this trait and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. You can also cast these spells using any spell slots you have. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for these spells.
Mules, the one animal of mixed species heritage people are familiar with, aren't culturally nor functionally the same as neither horses nor donkeys. They have traits of both parent species and emergent properties, and, well, that's a common thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis
The issue here is that real life human races are nowhere close as diverse as what different species are. In real life, despite the insistance of highly hateful groups, humans are highly homogeneous. Bottleneck event early in our history, a single significant radiation out of Africa that interbred with Neanderthals and Denisovans to the point their genes live on on that non-African branch of our species, and, well, constant contact that means everybody has blood of everywhere, specially in more recent times. All real humans are functionally the same, even if of course we have a keen eye to detect diversity in ourselves.
DnD humans, elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes and orcs are ALL different species. Yeah, they may be closely related species, who canonically are able to interbreed, and yes, they all are PEOPLE, but, biological differences ought to matter there. The kid of an elf and a dwarf not being prone to sleep due to elf biology, and being resistant to poisons due to dwarf biology, makes more sense and is more interesting than "they are a dwarf but with pointy ears" or "they are an elf but with a beard".
Real life people are animals, science has shown so for a quarter of a millenia. We run by the same rules, and that's not a pretext to dehumanize people.
Otherwise, you can have my +2 CHA half-elf Paladin when you pry her from my cold dead hands.
Well, the good news is you can still play that in the new version and literally nobody is stopping you.
Unless the DM is running the new version. Or I'm at an official event. Or participating in organized play. But yeah, other than all those people who would stop me, I should be good.
1D&D ties starting attribute bonuses to background rather than race, and mixed-race rules mean that you absolutely can have a half-elf character who gets +2 Charisma and is a Paladin.
I am aware, and it's another thing I don't care for and think is an unnecessary change. However that's a whole other bag of pedantry I'd rather not delve in to.
From reading through all the responses it seems to come down to this:
Some people want to play multi-racial characters for the story.
Some people want to play a Half-Elf or Half-Orc for the mechanical benefits in addition to story.
The new rules only give us "Story" options, there is no mechanical benefit to them because you choose the benefits of only one parent's race.
So maybe I should rephrase why I am upset about losing the Half-Elf (and the reason it is currently one of the most popular races to play). I want the mechanical benefits of the current Half-Elf. I can't get those benefits by default as part of my race under the new proposed rules. So either leave the Half-Elf as is, or give is a new base race that is the current Half-Elf mechanics with a new name so that people offended by it won't be offended.
Let's change the Half-Elf to the Jedozzi. They are a race of humanoids from deep in the forests that have "thin places" that border on the Feywild. The are mechanically Half-elves, but are now no-longer "offensive".
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"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing) You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
I want to play the half-elf that has both human and elven characteristics, but is neither fully human nor fully elven, and is seen as too human by humans and too elven by elves; therefore thriving everywhere but not quite belonging anywhere either. Alone in a crowd story-wise. Less focused elf with some human versatility mechanically-wise.
Why do you have to make even the most innocuous suggestion sound like an attack on people who're simply trying to play the game with fewer pain points?
I'd already done exactly that with "half-elves" in my own homebrew settings - the half-elf stat block is not "half elves", it's the Feytouched (a name they earned before 'Fey-Touched' became a feat, blugh) - a divergent form of technically-humanity that's lived in close proximity to Feystones (i.e. conduits to the Feywild, usually found at the center of an elven Grove) for enough generations to begin taking on more fey-like traits. To me, it plays into the idea that humanity as a species in D&D is inherently more mutable and volatile than other species, as is also evinced by the fact that it's easier to make humans into the various planetouched species than it is to do so for other kith (though it's by no means impossible to Planetouch other kith), and speaks to some fun ideas for games I could inflict on my players.
Humanity's mutability is both one of its greatest strengths and one of its most dangerous weaknesses, leaving the species as a whole more vulnerable to corrupting influences, which is a theme I enjoy tinkering with. And I can do it without taking backhanded potshots at people who just want to play the game in a way that doesn't chafe when and as they can.
From reading through all the responses it seems to come down to this:
Some people want to play multi-racial characters for the story.
Some people want to play a Half-Elf or Half-Orc for the mechanical benefits in addition to story.
The new rules only give us "Story" options, there is no mechanical benefit to them because you choose the benefits of only one parent's race.
So maybe I should rephrase why I am upset about losing the Half-Elf (and the reason it is currently one of the most popular races to play). I want the mechanical benefits of the current Half-Elf. I can't get those benefits by default as part of my race under the new proposed rules. So either leave the Half-Elf as is, or give is a new base race that is the current Half-Elf mechanics with a new name so that people offended by it won't be offended.
Let's change the Half-Elf to the Jedozzi. They are a race of humanoids from deep in the forests that have "thin places" that border on the Feywild. The are mechanically Half-elves, but are now no-longer "offensive".
Those mechanical benefits are now just Darkvision, Fey Ancestry, and two Skill proficiencies. Ability Scores are tied to background, so you can't get +2 Charisma and two +1s.
That reads like a boring "race" to play as. Both every variety of elf, and bugbear, are more interesting.
Why do you have to make even the most innocuous suggestion sound like an attack on people who're simply trying to play the game with fewer pain points?
Because the removal of pain points isn't inherently a good thing. We can all agree racism is bad, but we don't balk one bit at the idea of there being inherent racial differences in either D&D or other fictional mediums. Plus, I kind of feel that this topic here is proof that the removal of half-elves and half-orcs as a distinct entry is a pain point to people who enjoyed playing those races. I'd even go in so far as to say some of them would refuse to play 1DD solely because they lost that status (I'm on the fence currently and this isn't a point in favor and I feel certain at least one half-orc chef player in my groups will be refusing to migrate until there's no choice). In fact people who play those races tend to, quite distinctively, want to play THOSE RACES. I.E. They don't want to be a 'smart human', they want to be a vulcan with all that entails. So when you try to 'humanize' them you rob them of their distinctiveness and why people are attracted to them in the first place. My favorite character was a half-elf noble girl who was the product of her fathers second marriage and a huge part of her story arc was trying to forge an alliance with her mothers homeland only to get rejected because, even though she was part elf and technically related to a noble family, she was also part human. This was a huge part of her story and the plot on the whole and resulted in her trying to take on a wizard who far outclassed her to try and earn their respect. While you might feel that could have still happened with the new rules (and it could have) I would counter with, if half-elf had not been a distinct race, I likely would never have even thought of or considered that something like that could have happened and, thusly, had just some generic human. Because I wouldn't have even looked at half-elf in the first place to go 'there's something there I can work with with them being the product of a human and elf'. All the half-orc players I've met have, frankly, REVELED in the fact that their half-orc WAS a half-orc. Sure, it all came out in different ways (such as wishing they could be human and resenting their orcish half or reveling in their identity as a half-orc), but none of their players were unhappy with the half-orcs as a race. They enjoyed it, be it playing it straight or intentionally subverting it.
But, like I said before, this isn't about what's right or wrong, this is about what people will DO. With the removal of a distinctive entry in favor of what, honestly, looks to be little more than a sidebar blurb generic option, a lot of people simply aren't even going to think about a half-race at all in the first place. They're not going to see that blurb and, even if they do, they're not going to go 'Oh. I can play a half-race!' Unless they had a character idea already in mind they're going to go for one of the generic options. Like it or not the fact that Half-elves and half-orcs (and, honestly, any other mixed heritage race) were their own distinctive entry got people to think about playing such a thing in the first place. Even doing something as simple as turning this from a simple little rule blurb into a larger entry and going into detail about several common kinds of half-races would fix a LOT of issues from just a formatting and editing point and do a lot to draw interest into the option.
Like I said, at no point was I advocating for the removal of the generic option. I was advocating that Half-elves and half-orcs get their own distinct entry in addition to that. Especially since I felt they were beloved enough by the current playerbase to merit such a thing instead of what, frankly, feels like a back-handed and short-sighted attempt to be PC.
Why do you have to make even the most innocuous suggestion sound like an attack on people who're simply trying to play the game with fewer pain points?
Because the removal of pain points isn't inherently a good thing. We can all agree racism is bad, but we don't balk one bit at the idea of there being inherent racial differences in either D&D or other fictional mediums. Plus, I kind of feel that this topic here is proof that the removal of half-elves and half-orcs as a distinct entry is a pain point to people who enjoyed playing those races. I'd even go in so far as to say some of them would refuse to play 1DD solely because they lost that status (I'm on the fence currently and this isn't a point in favor and I feel certain at least one half-orc chef player in my groups will be refusing to migrate until there's no choice). In fact people who play those races tend to, quite distinctively, want to play THOSE RACES. I.E. They don't want to be a 'smart human', they want to be a vulcan with all that entails. So when you try to 'humanize' them you rob them of their distinctiveness and why people are attracted to them in the first place. My favorite character was a half-elf noble girl who was the product of her fathers second marriage and a huge part of her story arc was trying to forge an alliance with her mothers homeland only to get rejected because, even though she was part elf and technically related to a noble family, she was also part human. This was a huge part of her story and the plot on the whole and resulted in her trying to take on a wizard who far outclassed her to try and earn their respect. While you might feel that could have still happened with the new rules (and it could have) I would counter with, if half-elf had not been a distinct race, I likely would never have even thought of or considered that something like that could have happened and, thusly, had just some generic human. Because I wouldn't have even looked at half-elf in the first place to go 'there's something there I can work with with them being the product of a human and elf'. All the half-orc players I've met have, frankly, REVELED in the fact that their half-orc WAS a half-orc. Sure, it all came out in different ways (such as wishing they could be human and resenting their orcish half or reveling in their identity as a half-orc), but none of their players were unhappy with the half-orcs as a race. They enjoyed it, be it playing it straight or intentionally subverting it.
First off, anything and everything after the "but" is bull hockey. Everyone knows this. Second, even S'Chn T'Gai Spock, a half-vulcan (psionic space elf), grew up on Vulcan among his father's people. He looks like a vulcan, attented vulcan schools, and practiced vulcan customs. Face it, he's Star Trek's answer to Elrond Peredhel. And his twin, Elros Tar-Minyatur, is just the other side of the coin: a half-elf who embraced his human heritage. And the new sidebar reflects this.
Third, don't concede your point only to walk it back. The new rules don't prevent your character's story from being realized, so there's nothing to counter them with.
But, like I said before, this isn't about what's right or wrong, this is about what people will DO. With the removal of a distinctive entry in favor of what, honestly, looks to be little more than a sidebar blurb generic option, a lot of people simply aren't even going to think about a half-race at all in the first place. They're not going to see that blurb and, even if they do, they're not going to go 'Oh. I can play a half-race!' Unless they had a character idea already in mind they're going to go for one of the generic options. Like it or not the fact that Half-elves and half-orcs (and, honestly, any other mixed heritage race) were their own distinctive entry got people to think about playing such a thing in the first place. Even doing something as simple as turning this from a simple little rule blurb into a larger entry and going into detail about several common kinds of half-races would fix a LOT of issues from just a formatting and editing point and do a lot to draw interest into the option.
This reads like an accusation in search of a perpetrator. If people aren't going to read the packet, or book once it hits publication, that's on them. In fact, I'd go as far as to say you're telling on yourself. I don't think you read the Player's Handbook thoroughly, and just skimmed the options until you found something that spoke to you. The reality is the sidebar is a big step in the right direction. Even if we think it's handled haphazardly, it still opens the door to all kinds of intermixing. Before, the only obvious choices were half-elf and half-orc. We get super-special hybrid children, and every other kind of hybrid either doesn't exist or gets lumped together. Either way, it promotes marking someone as "the other."
Having distinct entries for any sort of mixed-race person is a bad idea. Nobody should be that special, and where do you draw the line? If something doesn't exist, is it disallowed? Or should we give players permission to make whatever they darn well please? If you think it can be handled better, then come up with a system for everyone and advocate for that.
Like I said, at no point was I advocating for the removal of the generic option. I was advocating that Half-elves and half-orcs get their own distinct entry in addition to that. Especially since I felt they were beloved enough by the current playerbase to merit such a thing instead of what, frankly, feels like a back-handed and short-sighted attempt to be PC.
Again, you're attempting to "other" certain player characters. Mixed peoples, like half-elves and half-orcs, are no more deserving of entries than anyone else. They're relics you're desperately trying to cling to, and all it'll do is cause more problems. I'd like to end pointing you to Neil Gaiman's blog (dated February 14th, 2013), and in case anyone's browser isn't cooperating, I'll quote the text as well.
I was reading a book (about interjections, oddly enough) yesterday which included the phrase “In these days of political correctness…” talking about no longer making jokes that denigrated people for their culture or for the colour of their skin. And I thought, “That’s not actually anything to do with ‘political correctness’. That’s just treating other people with respect.”
Which made me oddly happy. I started imagining a world in which we replaced the phrase “politically correct” wherever we could with “treating other people with respect”, and it made me smile.
You should try it. It’s peculiarly enlightening.
I know what you’re thinking now. You’re thinking “Oh my god, that’s treating other people with respect gone mad!”
Happy Valentine’s Day.
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I, too, have always been drawn to Half Elves and their lore. But I am also very pleased with this direction for representing biracial and multiracial characters. You don't lose those stories, and you get the space to tell other stories as well. And it's done in a way that acknowledges that multiracial people are people and not weird and inherently distinct others.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
As soon as this Pandora's box is open, there will inevitably emerge the optimized master race, and it will be super popular, I guarantee that. And that's all there is to it. People want raw power through optimization. Same reason half-elves are popular - they're like elves, but mechanically better.
Edgy outsider trope? Lazy writing.
Well, the good news is you can still play that in the new version and literally nobody is stopping you.
I read two of the Dragonlance Trilogies and 9ish of the Drizzt books. In Dragonlance, Half-Elves are extremely rare and you basically only ever see one in the main stories. On Toril, they also don't have any major cultures or influence.
I don't care if they're popular or not. They're still playable. They're just not considered "special" in comparison to the other half-races anymore.
"People liking the race means that they aren't an afterthought in the worlds that they're included in" is an extremely dumb argument. Halflings are barely a part of most D&D settings, with their typical identity being "just hobbits with some weird kender/leprechaun stuff added on for no reason". They're unimportant and an afterthought to most worlds that they're a part of (except Dark Sun and Eberron), but they're still a pretty popular race (because tradition and nostalgia for Lord of the Rings, mainly).
Things can be extremely popular and poorly thought out/"afterthoughts". Half-Elves definitely are both in a lot of worlds.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
As soon as this Pandora's box is open, there will inevitably emerge the optimized master race, and it will be super popular, I guarantee that. And that's all there is to it. People want raw power through optimization. Same reason half-elves are popular - they're like elves, but mechanically better.
Edgy outsider trope? Lazy writing.
Not actually true. The sad reality is that, as many games have shown, no matter what options you provide the playerbase they will be heavily inclined towards the 'pretty/sexy' one followed by 'generic human'. I remember a short while back there was a huge outrage because BG3 had it's developers release an amalgomation of everyone's character and it was... the most generic white guy possible. (Outrage happened because people weren't happy about being spied on, but that's entirely unrelated all-together). D&D itself released a summary of 1,000 randomly selected characters a while back (2018 I think?) and human was the most popular followed by elf and half-elf. In WoW the Horde are the most popular faction but the most populous race is Blood Elf, both the most 'human-like' (admittably debatable given the forsaken) and the 'prettiest' Horde race. On the Alliance side Night Elves and Humans were the most popular. In XIV Female Miqo'te and Au-Ra utterly dominate the playerbase leaving all other racial choices in the dust. While I'm not 100% certain, I suspect this will hold true for almost any game out there that isn't competative. Given a choice people will opt for the 'pretty/sexy' race followed by generic human. I suspect that the 'optimal' race will only matter to powergamers unless they have a racial so utterly broken that even casual players can't deny it's OP'ness. Even then the pretty/sexy race will likely still be the most popular; just not overwhelmingly so.
I, too, have always been drawn to Half Elves and their lore. But I am also very pleased with this direction for representing biracial and multiracial characters. You don't lose those stories, and you get the space to tell other stories as well. And it's done in a way that acknowledges that multiracial people are people and not weird and inherently distinct others.
Okay. First off... No one is taking the representation away. I'm not arguing that we should nuke the generic option and only have half-elves or something. If you want to play a half-goliath, half-Yuan Ti, you can and I won't have a problem with that. Or at least the question of if a child between the two races is possible/viable would be a whole different and unrelated can of worms that I'm pretty sure most people are happy not discussing. I'm saying that rolling these two races into the generic option seems like a terrible and misguided decision that's going to do nothing but hurt the number of people playing half-elves as they'll lose a lot of their distinctiveness, uniqueness, and, well, everything. In return we will likely see people just opting to... not... touch the generic option or, if they do, they won't be 'delving deep' into it and just picking half-elf/half-orc and not bothering one bit with exploring other options.
This isn't about what's right or wrong morally. This is about what people will DO and how they will react. If half-elf and half-orc had been set apart with the generic option being included I wouldn't have batted an eye. But I can see exactly what will happen here. They'll be folded into the generic option and, instead of people using it, they'll just go pure elf/human instead or, if they do mix them, it will be basically 'I want to be a human but have the elves dark vision' or 'I want to be an elf, but the free feat from variant human is too sexy to pass up'. You likely won't get half-elves, you'll get humans with pointy ears/elves with rounded ears. Or, worse, you'll get people who want the orc racials but don't want to be 'ugly' and will be a 'half-orc' which is just generic white guy Joe but with the orc abilities.
As-is this is a very poorly worded, written, and designed concept that needs more time in the oven and removing distinctive half-races won't, somehow, fix the problem. It will result in people either ignoring it completely or using the half-race option to be a generic human/whatever race, but with other races racial ability. If you want diversity, this is going to backfire horribly.
Well, human is obviously popular because it's easy to associate oneself with a human protagonist. As for "sexy" races, the matter of appearance is now completely up to players. You can play a half-elf that looks like anything between human and elf with no strict regulations. Elven unearthly beauty, human big boobs. Easy. Just not the cherry-picked stats.
>>So I gave you a direct account from literally a previous edition as proof that it not "just now" which I think is relevant.
And I'm telling you, again, that your single example is anecdotal and therefore not compelling.
>>And how am I doing that, exactly? I'm telling you how I and other people feel.
>>That is direct first hand evidence of how those two races made us uncomfortable.
And there is that "us" again. I'm sure that people are capable of expressing their opinions without your assistance.
>>Like someone already pointed out, portraying biracial people as inherently distinct races with mechanical differences is othering to people who are actually biracial.
Well what a happy coincidence. That's very kind of you, but what makes you think anyone would *want* you to speak for them? What makes you think anyone would be offended at all? Don't answer; we'll come back to that.
DND is not real life. I think we can draw distinction between how we, as actual humans in the real world, can and should view and treat each other vs. how imaginary and vastly different fantasy races, most of whom should not physically or biologically be able to interbreed with each other AT ALL, somehow end up with viable offspring anyway.
Taking offense over the idea that such offspring might have unique qualities (which of course they would), IN A GAME, is... I don't know. It seems kind of trivial. That's just my take, but hey, what do I know? I could be wrong.
>>You don't get to dictate whether or not it is sensible, that is not your place.
I thought we'd established that we don't need an opinion disclaimer at the start of every statement. And frankly, it's not your place to dictate either, yet you keep doing it while unironically claiming to speak for others. I don't doubt that your heart is in the right place, but I'm here to tell you that you really shouldn't be speaking for anyone but yourself. After all, I just want to keep my Half-Elf and Half-Orc. That's it. They are important to me. And also... maybe let's not do the whole passive-aggressive, "oh I'm just speaking up for people who might be offended" thing. It's so gauche. Speaking only for myself, if I'm offended, I'll let you know, believe me. That is not your place.
Unless the DM is running the new version. Or I'm at an official event. Or participating in organized play. But yeah, other than all those people who would stop me, I should be good.
I think that's a good thing those races that were weird legacy edge cases are gone as we knew them BUT I don't think the playtest properly addresses people that want to play a multiracial character yet.
For me race choices should be significant enough to provide players with additional roleplay and gameplay opportunity than just a re-skinned elf or orc that was always available to character creation, I would feel the same if multiclass was just using one class' rules and another class' visual appearance.
I think they can do better without making race selection a nightmare, maybe an option to swap one of the feature from each races (would probably require some hierarchy) and hybrid races would already feel way more unique.
On a side node I feel like it puts tieflings in a weird spot as they are often considered as some sort of hybrid humans.
Interesting distinction. Not sure I get it, but moving on.
Yeah, of course you will. How do I know? Because you still got that with the regular halfsies rules. At my own games, both the half elf and the half orc characters who showed up (played by different players, also) were selected specifically for their mechanics, and treated as if they were simply an elf and an orc respectively.
Could it be that players by and large don't care about the halfsies lore, and the only reason these races have such good metrics is that they're mechanically good? Is it possible that your opinion is the minority one?
Tieflings need a real diversification push. By their lore, there's no reason they should all be human-based. Elf tieflings, halfling tieflings, etc all make perfect sense but you don't see them. They also need to make it super clear, if it's supposed to be its own distinct race, that they're really seriously different from birth. Idk, tieflings are weird. Aasimar are weirder though because they aren't even crayon colored. I feel like you'd never even know someone was an aasimar if they didn't tell you.
Speaking as someone who read rather a lot of them way back when, my entire recollection of half-elves and -orcs in them was Tanis in the original Dragonlance books. Are there more, somewhere? I'm sure there are, but there's a lot of D&D novels, and, frankly, most of them are mediocre.
I'm pretty sure they were in AD&D 1 solely for shameless Tolkien-ripping-off reasons.
Are they popular because of the special allure of playing somebody who's something of an outsider, or is it because half-elf gets you +2 charisma and you don't want to play a tiefling? (And you get two freely-placable other stat bumps to boot, something nobody else has.) It's certainly why my first 5e character was a half-elf: that character's racial identity was "warlock".
And I'm pretty sure half-orcs are popular because people want to play actual orcs, and that's the closest thing in the PHB.
With the new way of doing things, people can play human/orc or human/elf if it fits their concept, not because it gets them the most plusses.
Sigh.
We're never going to be done with this fight, are we?
Color me as a person who, in the vacuum of my own brain, wishes that mixed-species characters could mingle the traits of their parent species. Except I can in fact do that, provided I can get my DM to buy in on a homebrew mixing of species. Is it official? No, and honestly there's a good argument to be made that it shouldn't be. Unlike some, I'm going to choose to believe people who tell me that mixed-species characters being 'Other' from their parents/the population at large is uncomfortable for them. Their appreciation for the new rule given in Origins playtest is as valid as my gut feeling that it feels anemic and inadequate, and the onus is on me to invent a solution for myself, not on them to suffer discomfort so I can be happier.
The easy fix is to encourage DMs to allow homebrew modification where and as it makes sense, perhaps with some guidelines on how to do so, but to otherwise state "most hybrid/mixed-heritage/multiracial characters use the characteristics of one of their parent species, but with an appearance chosen by their player." Yes, that's throwing it to homebrew and people hate doing that, DMs absolutely DETEST being encouraged to allow their players to muck with shit like that, but there's not really an 'Official Choice' that works better. I can brew up my insane tiffle/centaur mixed-species character and tune her traits exactly how I want them with whatever input the DM chooses to give*, and other folks can play a half-and-half based on the stats of their favorite and the appearance they want without censure or weirdness.
"But Rei, I can't do homebrew at conventions or hobby-shop tables or stuff!" Correct. You can't. Save your tiffle/centaur faend hybrid things for home games where you're allowed to really wallow in the hybridization and play Normie Stuff at limited-play tables. You can do it. Not every table need allow every possible thing, and playing that sort of nonsense at a convention game is entirely missing the point of "convention game" anyways.
*
I'm actually pretty proud of Manadh, even if she's utterly blasphemous and overtuned as **** for most games. The DM for the game she's aimed at likes souped-up, overcharged species blocks though, and gave me permission to go a little wild. So she's set up as follows, since one of the advantages of "homebrew your own species block" means you can tune the species to exactly what your specific character needs.
Manadh's CenTiefling Stat Block:
*****
Centieflings - sometimes - share a certain blend of traits from their infeynal heritage.
Ability Score Increase
Your Intelligence score increases by 1, and your Charisma score increases by 2.
Age
As both a tiffle and a hoss, with fey and infernal bloodlines mixed in your veins, you don't really know how long you'll live. But you matured only about half as quickly as a typical human, so you're expecting to see quite a few more years yet. You're young, scrappy and hungry and you're not throwing away your shot.
Size
You're a fairly compact sort for someone with a horse butt. Your tiffle bits are about human-sized and your hoss bits are more like 'pony' than 'courser'. Your size is Medium.
Speed
Your base walking speed is 40 feet.
Darkvision
Thanks to your infeynal heritage, you have superior vision in dark and dim conditions. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can’t discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.
Equine Build
You count as one size larger when determining your carrying capacity and the weight you can push or drag.
In addition, any climb that requires hands and feet is especially difficult for you because of your equine legs. When you make such a climb, each foot of movement costs you 4 extra feet instead of the normal 1 extra foot.
Infeynal Legacy
Your bloodlines are both rich in magic, and you are no exception. You know the thaumaturgy cantrip. When you reach 3rd level, you can cast hellish rebuke as a 2nd-level spell once with this trait and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. When you reach 5th level, you can cast Nathair's Mischief once with this trait and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. You can also cast these spells using any spell slots you have. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for these spells.
Languages
You can speak, read, and write Common and Orc.
Please do not contact or message me.
Mules, the one animal of mixed species heritage people are familiar with, aren't culturally nor functionally the same as neither horses nor donkeys. They have traits of both parent species and emergent properties, and, well, that's a common thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis
The issue here is that real life human races are nowhere close as diverse as what different species are. In real life, despite the insistance of highly hateful groups, humans are highly homogeneous. Bottleneck event early in our history, a single significant radiation out of Africa that interbred with Neanderthals and Denisovans to the point their genes live on on that non-African branch of our species, and, well, constant contact that means everybody has blood of everywhere, specially in more recent times. All real humans are functionally the same, even if of course we have a keen eye to detect diversity in ourselves.
DnD humans, elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes and orcs are ALL different species. Yeah, they may be closely related species, who canonically are able to interbreed, and yes, they all are PEOPLE, but, biological differences ought to matter there. The kid of an elf and a dwarf not being prone to sleep due to elf biology, and being resistant to poisons due to dwarf biology, makes more sense and is more interesting than "they are a dwarf but with pointy ears" or "they are an elf but with a beard".
Real life people are animals, science has shown so for a quarter of a millenia. We run by the same rules, and that's not a pretext to dehumanize people.
I am aware, and it's another thing I don't care for and think is an unnecessary change. However that's a whole other bag of pedantry I'd rather not delve in to.
From reading through all the responses it seems to come down to this:
Some people want to play multi-racial characters for the story.
Some people want to play a Half-Elf or Half-Orc for the mechanical benefits in addition to story.
The new rules only give us "Story" options, there is no mechanical benefit to them because you choose the benefits of only one parent's race.
So maybe I should rephrase why I am upset about losing the Half-Elf (and the reason it is currently one of the most popular races to play). I want the mechanical benefits of the current Half-Elf. I can't get those benefits by default as part of my race under the new proposed rules. So either leave the Half-Elf as is, or give is a new base race that is the current Half-Elf mechanics with a new name so that people offended by it won't be offended.
Let's change the Half-Elf to the Jedozzi. They are a race of humanoids from deep in the forests that have "thin places" that border on the Feywild. The are mechanically Half-elves, but are now no-longer "offensive".
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing)
You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
I want to play the half-elf that has both human and elven characteristics, but is neither fully human nor fully elven, and is seen as too human by humans and too elven by elves; therefore thriving everywhere but not quite belonging anywhere either. Alone in a crowd story-wise. Less focused elf with some human versatility mechanically-wise.
Why do you have to make even the most innocuous suggestion sound like an attack on people who're simply trying to play the game with fewer pain points?
I'd already done exactly that with "half-elves" in my own homebrew settings - the half-elf stat block is not "half elves", it's the Feytouched (a name they earned before 'Fey-Touched' became a feat, blugh) - a divergent form of technically-humanity that's lived in close proximity to Feystones (i.e. conduits to the Feywild, usually found at the center of an elven Grove) for enough generations to begin taking on more fey-like traits. To me, it plays into the idea that humanity as a species in D&D is inherently more mutable and volatile than other species, as is also evinced by the fact that it's easier to make humans into the various planetouched species than it is to do so for other kith (though it's by no means impossible to Planetouch other kith), and speaks to some fun ideas for games I could inflict on my players.
Humanity's mutability is both one of its greatest strengths and one of its most dangerous weaknesses, leaving the species as a whole more vulnerable to corrupting influences, which is a theme I enjoy tinkering with. And I can do it without taking backhanded potshots at people who just want to play the game in a way that doesn't chafe when and as they can.
Please do not contact or message me.
Those mechanical benefits are now just Darkvision, Fey Ancestry, and two Skill proficiencies. Ability Scores are tied to background, so you can't get +2 Charisma and two +1s.
That reads like a boring "race" to play as. Both every variety of elf, and bugbear, are more interesting.
Why do you have to make even the most innocuous suggestion sound like an attack on people who're simply trying to play the game with fewer pain points?
Because the removal of pain points isn't inherently a good thing. We can all agree racism is bad, but we don't balk one bit at the idea of there being inherent racial differences in either D&D or other fictional mediums. Plus, I kind of feel that this topic here is proof that the removal of half-elves and half-orcs as a distinct entry is a pain point to people who enjoyed playing those races. I'd even go in so far as to say some of them would refuse to play 1DD solely because they lost that status (I'm on the fence currently and this isn't a point in favor and I feel certain at least one half-orc chef player in my groups will be refusing to migrate until there's no choice). In fact people who play those races tend to, quite distinctively, want to play THOSE RACES. I.E. They don't want to be a 'smart human', they want to be a vulcan with all that entails. So when you try to 'humanize' them you rob them of their distinctiveness and why people are attracted to them in the first place. My favorite character was a half-elf noble girl who was the product of her fathers second marriage and a huge part of her story arc was trying to forge an alliance with her mothers homeland only to get rejected because, even though she was part elf and technically related to a noble family, she was also part human. This was a huge part of her story and the plot on the whole and resulted in her trying to take on a wizard who far outclassed her to try and earn their respect. While you might feel that could have still happened with the new rules (and it could have) I would counter with, if half-elf had not been a distinct race, I likely would never have even thought of or considered that something like that could have happened and, thusly, had just some generic human. Because I wouldn't have even looked at half-elf in the first place to go 'there's something there I can work with with them being the product of a human and elf'. All the half-orc players I've met have, frankly, REVELED in the fact that their half-orc WAS a half-orc. Sure, it all came out in different ways (such as wishing they could be human and resenting their orcish half or reveling in their identity as a half-orc), but none of their players were unhappy with the half-orcs as a race. They enjoyed it, be it playing it straight or intentionally subverting it.
But, like I said before, this isn't about what's right or wrong, this is about what people will DO. With the removal of a distinctive entry in favor of what, honestly, looks to be little more than a sidebar blurb generic option, a lot of people simply aren't even going to think about a half-race at all in the first place. They're not going to see that blurb and, even if they do, they're not going to go 'Oh. I can play a half-race!' Unless they had a character idea already in mind they're going to go for one of the generic options. Like it or not the fact that Half-elves and half-orcs (and, honestly, any other mixed heritage race) were their own distinctive entry got people to think about playing such a thing in the first place. Even doing something as simple as turning this from a simple little rule blurb into a larger entry and going into detail about several common kinds of half-races would fix a LOT of issues from just a formatting and editing point and do a lot to draw interest into the option.
Like I said, at no point was I advocating for the removal of the generic option. I was advocating that Half-elves and half-orcs get their own distinct entry in addition to that. Especially since I felt they were beloved enough by the current playerbase to merit such a thing instead of what, frankly, feels like a back-handed and short-sighted attempt to be PC.
First off, anything and everything after the "but" is bull hockey. Everyone knows this. Second, even S'Chn T'Gai Spock, a half-vulcan (psionic space elf), grew up on Vulcan among his father's people. He looks like a vulcan, attented vulcan schools, and practiced vulcan customs. Face it, he's Star Trek's answer to Elrond Peredhel. And his twin, Elros Tar-Minyatur, is just the other side of the coin: a half-elf who embraced his human heritage. And the new sidebar reflects this.
Third, don't concede your point only to walk it back. The new rules don't prevent your character's story from being realized, so there's nothing to counter them with.
This reads like an accusation in search of a perpetrator. If people aren't going to read the packet, or book once it hits publication, that's on them. In fact, I'd go as far as to say you're telling on yourself. I don't think you read the Player's Handbook thoroughly, and just skimmed the options until you found something that spoke to you. The reality is the sidebar is a big step in the right direction. Even if we think it's handled haphazardly, it still opens the door to all kinds of intermixing. Before, the only obvious choices were half-elf and half-orc. We get super-special hybrid children, and every other kind of hybrid either doesn't exist or gets lumped together. Either way, it promotes marking someone as "the other."
Having distinct entries for any sort of mixed-race person is a bad idea. Nobody should be that special, and where do you draw the line? If something doesn't exist, is it disallowed? Or should we give players permission to make whatever they darn well please? If you think it can be handled better, then come up with a system for everyone and advocate for that.
Again, you're attempting to "other" certain player characters. Mixed peoples, like half-elves and half-orcs, are no more deserving of entries than anyone else. They're relics you're desperately trying to cling to, and all it'll do is cause more problems. I'd like to end pointing you to Neil Gaiman's blog (dated February 14th, 2013), and in case anyone's browser isn't cooperating, I'll quote the text as well.