Instead of simply choosing a race, why not choose "two sides of the family," so to speak. We all know that a player's interpretation of their character is going to often be a bit different that the rules as written, so why not build in some room to allow for that.
You start with a list of bloodlines: Light, Shadow, Draconic, Dwarf, Fey, Human, and Primal. Pick 2, and write your history around that. You might have a Fey/Human half-elf or a Fey/Human of Dryad descent. Tieflings are of shadow/human descent, but how do they vary? Eladrin are light/fey descent, which solves their confused origins between editions.
You make the case that some mixed heritages don't yield something 'in between' and there is some variation possible as noted above.
Each bloodline confers certain pieces, and then have a small list of things you could choose from based on the 49 combinations above. Alternatively, you could have primary and secondary bloodlines and offer 96 combinations (Fey/Human is not the same as Human/Fey).
Light/Fey can have Misty Step OR Suggestion OR Locate Object 1/short or long Rest for example.
And while we are on the subject, we should probably sort of swap High Elves and Dark Elf abilities.
All Elves are graceful and quick, so bonus to dexterity. Elves are free spirits, capricious and fun with natural magical tendencies and unearthly beauty, so naturally they have a bonus to intelligence, and hide out in colleges trying to learn arcane rituals and being book nerds? Why not make them the charisma enhanced sorcerers who enjoy using magic effortlessly rather than memorizing books thicker than they are?
Dark Elves, meanwhile, went underground hunting for knowledge and secrets to lost power. So they became suave and debonair while handing in a cave reading ancient tomes and forging dark bargains? Shouldn't they be the intelligence augmented race bent on Wizardry (or worse).
While I feel like you put in some effort to this concept and it might work in a different TTRPG, I kind of feel like doing this could easily ruin the point of races in general. Not to mention there would be a ton of min-maxing and, I bet, as much as some people would like to have customizable features like that, an equal amount would be upset at such a thing. Especially if it wasn't optional. They want their humans to be human, dwarves to be dwarves, and so-forth and, while they may be fine with sub-species, opening up the floodgates would be far too much for them.
And have you ever met a person who didn't want to play something 'just like this, but with a little bit of that?
And min-maxes always gotta do their thing. Just up to the DM to wreck their murder hobos with obscure skill challenges and there skill freaks with elaborate dungeon crawls.
While I have met people who have desired a bit of variability at times I don't feel like catering to them so heavily would be smart. Especially since a lot of people do like the uniqueness of each race and blurring the boundries between them would not likely go over well. I also don't think 'min-maxers gonna min-max anyways' is a viable excuse because there's a world of difference between accepting that they'll find some broken combination and actively giving them a system ripe for it.
More flexibility is fine. The thing is that I don't think it's necessary. WoTC publishes a lot of material, and in that material they often publish races. So there's enough variability to make whatever character you want. Also, in One D&D the ASIS go with the background, and you can also choose a lvl1 feat. With that, starting from a base race, you can reskin to play whatever comes to mind.
Sorry, not familiar with ASIS. could you elaborate a little. I guess I am not up on my ETLAs (extended three letter acronyms) :)
I would have to see how that works to determine if it works for me and what I would like.
OH, you mean ASIs, not some NEW 4 letter Acronym. (I blame the holidays)
No, trading a feat for ASI and trying to re-skin is not the same. Your race means you learned less in life? That doesn't sound like a message I would want to promote anyway.
But, it begins to sound like my idea may not be as popular as I'd hoped. So be it.
To clarify, what they mean is that your ability score bonuses at character creation aren't going to be tied to your race anymore. It comes during the Background part of character creation. You can pick any ability you want.
Everyone also picks one feat during the Background stage. So the UA version of creating a character with parents of two races is:
Select one race for the racial features.
Choose a feat and ability bonuses to reflect whatever else you want to show.
Choose how your parentage affects your appearance.
So if you wanted to make a character that has one Halfling parent and one Dwarf parent, you might pick the Dwarven racial features, the Lucky feat, and put your ability score increases into Dexterity and Constitution.
No one loses any bonuses. Everyone gets the same set of bonuses to work with. It's all meant to be completely balanced. Now, it might not have the level of mixing and matching that you want. Many other people have expressed dissatisfaction with it too. But the reason this thread might not be getting much attention is because the topic has already been hotly debated for weeks and I think most people don't want to rehash it.
You put effort into presenting a new way to try customization. It's an interesting thought. It does not appeal to me personally, for reasons Snowtworf pointed out.
What I would like to see is more Level 1 Feat choices to let us use the UA system more fully to the same effect. There are some easy choices, like the Lucky feat to represent a Halfling parent, or Magic Initiate to represent an Elven parent. But some others are hard to fit in with what we have so far.
Instead of simply choosing a race, why not choose "two sides of the family," so to speak. We all know that a player's interpretation of their character is going to often be a bit different that the rules as written, so why not build in some room to allow for that.
You start with a list of bloodlines: Light, Shadow, Draconic, Dwarf, Fey, Human, and Primal. Pick 2, and write your history around that. You might have a Fey/Human half-elf or a Fey/Human of Dryad descent. Tieflings are of shadow/human descent, but how do they vary? Eladrin are light/fey descent, which solves their confused origins between editions.
You make the case that some mixed heritages don't yield something 'in between' and there is some variation possible as noted above.
Each bloodline confers certain pieces, and then have a small list of things you could choose from based on the 49 combinations above. Alternatively, you could have primary and secondary bloodlines and offer 96 combinations (Fey/Human is not the same as Human/Fey).
Light/Fey can have Misty Step OR Suggestion OR Locate Object 1/short or long Rest for example.
And while we are on the subject, we should probably sort of swap High Elves and Dark Elf abilities.
All Elves are graceful and quick, so bonus to dexterity. Elves are free spirits, capricious and fun with natural magical tendencies and unearthly beauty, so naturally they have a bonus to intelligence, and hide out in colleges trying to learn arcane rituals and being book nerds? Why not make them the charisma enhanced sorcerers who enjoy using magic effortlessly rather than memorizing books thicker than they are?
Dark Elves, meanwhile, went underground hunting for knowledge and secrets to lost power. So they became suave and debonair while handing in a cave reading ancient tomes and forging dark bargains? Shouldn't they be the intelligence augmented race bent on Wizardry (or worse).
While I feel like you put in some effort to this concept and it might work in a different TTRPG, I kind of feel like doing this could easily ruin the point of races in general. Not to mention there would be a ton of min-maxing and, I bet, as much as some people would like to have customizable features like that, an equal amount would be upset at such a thing. Especially if it wasn't optional. They want their humans to be human, dwarves to be dwarves, and so-forth and, while they may be fine with sub-species, opening up the floodgates would be far too much for them.
For them, there are always the default races.
And have you ever met a person who didn't want to play something 'just like this, but with a little bit of that?
And min-maxes always gotta do their thing. Just up to the DM to wreck their murder hobos with obscure skill challenges and there skill freaks with elaborate dungeon crawls.
While I have met people who have desired a bit of variability at times I don't feel like catering to them so heavily would be smart. Especially since a lot of people do like the uniqueness of each race and blurring the boundries between them would not likely go over well. I also don't think 'min-maxers gonna min-max anyways' is a viable excuse because there's a world of difference between accepting that they'll find some broken combination and actively giving them a system ripe for it.
More flexibility is fine. The thing is that I don't think it's necessary. WoTC publishes a lot of material, and in that material they often publish races. So there's enough variability to make whatever character you want.
Also, in One D&D the ASIS go with the background, and you can also choose a lvl1 feat. With that, starting from a base race, you can reskin to play whatever comes to mind.
Sorry, not familiar with ASIS. could you elaborate a little. I guess I am not up on my ETLAs (extended three letter acronyms) :)
I would have to see how that works to determine if it works for me and what I would like.
OH, you mean ASIs, not some NEW 4 letter Acronym. (I blame the holidays)
No, trading a feat for ASI and trying to re-skin is not the same. Your race means you learned less in life? That doesn't sound like a message I would want to promote anyway.
But, it begins to sound like my idea may not be as popular as I'd hoped. So be it.
To clarify, what they mean is that your ability score bonuses at character creation aren't going to be tied to your race anymore. It comes during the Background part of character creation. You can pick any ability you want.
Everyone also picks one feat during the Background stage. So the UA version of creating a character with parents of two races is:
Select one race for the racial features.
Choose a feat and ability bonuses to reflect whatever else you want to show.
Choose how your parentage affects your appearance.
So if you wanted to make a character that has one Halfling parent and one Dwarf parent, you might pick the Dwarven racial features, the Lucky feat, and put your ability score increases into Dexterity and Constitution.
No one loses any bonuses. Everyone gets the same set of bonuses to work with. It's all meant to be completely balanced. Now, it might not have the level of mixing and matching that you want. Many other people have expressed dissatisfaction with it too. But the reason this thread might not be getting much attention is because the topic has already been hotly debated for weeks and I think most people don't want to rehash it.
You put effort into presenting a new way to try customization. It's an interesting thought. It does not appeal to me personally, for reasons Snowtworf pointed out.
What I would like to see is more Level 1 Feat choices to let us use the UA system more fully to the same effect. There are some easy choices, like the Lucky feat to represent a Halfling parent, or Magic Initiate to represent an Elven parent. But some others are hard to fit in with what we have so far.
I really hope they nerf Lucky. It's too... universal... It feels like every feat and ASI gets weighted against it.