Look upthread at the suggestion of making hybrid characters inherently inferior tl "purebloods" due to mechanical tradeoffs. I'd expect WotC to remove Species from the game rules e timely before touching that sort of idea with a bargepole.
Everything without a mechanical expression is equally "viable", yes. The viability of meaninglessness in the game.
What does that have to do with half creatures in D&D AND how does that go away by simply moving "half" to background? That's a people issue. They will do it or not.
All of that sounds like simultaneously a waste of design effort AND a cash grab. How far we've fallen.I will facetiously joke and say that WotC's true design goal is to merely reproduce the 2014E game, except making Beastmaster Rangers, 4 Elements Monks, the Weapons table and the Stealth rules cleaned up and made more explicit, plus removing the +10 bonus damage from the Great Weapon and Sharpshooter feats...
...just so players will finally shut up about those stupid things. They've been whining about them for 8 years and they won't ever stop.
Anything past that? It's indeed just moving chairs around trying to clean up some language and make a few series of instructions clearer. Not totally necessary, but if you're going to re-produce the book anyway, might as well do it. But there's never been any intention of turning this new version into something 2014E is not. It's not 4E, it's not Level Up, it's merely a spit shine on 2014E. That's it. And if you don't like 2014E... there's absolutely no reason to bother following along. You're just just going to make yourself upset.
Well, WotC is going to tell people they can be Half-Gnomes or Half-Orcs. Or will they enter the minefield of racial hierarchy. This is basically inevitable due to market forces.
Making games is a business of pleasing people. Therefore WotC will pursue the path of pleasing the most people: say "yes" to hybrids, but not turning off people with racial hierchy.
WotC's way to handle mixed heritage is literally the only "safe" method? That's hilarious.
Hybrids are just as much a "racial heirarchy" as half races are. Hybrid vs. half race is just like six vs. half dozen.
