D&D (2024) How did I miss this about the Half races/ancestries

[AstroCat]

It seems a lot of folks are letting their outrage blind them to what WotC put out earlier. Only the term "half-x" is being removed. You can absolutely play mixed species, as described a month or so ago. You just choose which of the two species you favor more than others. He didn't say the concept of having mixed races is racist (which seems to be evident by the fact you can still have parents of different races), but the TERM "half" is inherently racist. As a parent of a mixed raced child, I can tell you that's very much true. My son is not "half" anything.

Videos like this from The Dungeon Delver (who I otherwise get along with) I think are not only factually incorrect, they are irresponsible. He's saying Jeremy is saying anyone who is of mixed race is bad. No, that's not what Jeremy is saying at all.

As the parent of a mixed ethnicity child, my wife and myself being different basic ethnicities, I can totally say it is not racist at all to use the term half, in fact that is how we all describe our son, him included. He is proudly half one thing and half another thing, total reality. Heck I'm mixed ethnicity just not as obvious as our son. I'm split into 1/4s, and yes I say my ethnic background is 1/4 this, 1/4 that etc...

And they killed all the cool stuff that made half unique, now it's just one thing mechanically with another made up description. So yeah they killed the fun and cool part. You should be able to pull from both races and mix them together, it starts getting racist to me when we say one is the dominant race over the other like they are proposing now, that sucks like wotc does in general these days.

See, look how that went...

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

As the parent of a mixed ethnicity child, my wife and myself being different basic ethnicities, I can totally say it is not racist at all to use the term half, in fact that is how we all describe our son, him included. He is proudly half one thing and half another thing, total reality. Heck I'm mixed ethnicity just not as obvious as our son. I'm split into 1/4s, and yes I say my ethnic background is 1/4 this, 1/4 that etc...

And they killed all the cool stuff that made half unique, now it's just one thing mechanically with another made up description. So yeah they killed the fun and cool part. You should be able to pull from both races and mix them together, it starts getting racist to me when we say one is the dominant race over the other like they are proposing now, that sucks like wotc does in general these days.

See, look how that went...

Just an FYI, @Sacrosanct is also a parent of a mixed child, and they feel (per their post up thread) very differently than you. Not surprisingly, different people feel differently!

 

[MGibster]

You could what we did in 1e. The Dorc. Half Dwarf Half Orc. Take the best of both races and leave the limits on the floor. But the crazy old man in my head is trying to filk Johnny Cash's Once piece of time about his car and apply to ancestry.

So, eugenics? I kid. I kid. Sort of. This is one of those areas where I think some people are going to be happy no matter what WotC does. They just have to decide which option will anger the fewest people (who are likely to buy their product).

 

[Corinnguard]

Here's what I would do: each ancestry has two types of traits: Major Traits and Minor Traits. Depending on how powerful the Major Traits are, an ancestry could have more or less Minor Traits. When making a mixed ancestry character, you pick 1 base Ancestry and get the Major Traits and then you get to swap as many Minor Traits as you want from your other parents. Or heck, as many other ancestry as you want! Maybe your grand parents are all from different ancestry!

Human – 5th Edition SRD Something like this? This ancestry is one of several ancestries from Ancestry Awakened by Pirate Gonzalez Games.

The full list of ancestries is on this link: Races – 5th Edition SRD

 

[Neonchameleon]

Which still exist with the current proposal. You choose which parentage is the dominant one. Just like I have blue eyes if my parents have brown and blue eyes.

...

That can still be done, right? What's stopping a PC with a human dad and orc mother doing the same trope?

"You choose which parentage is the dominant one." Not either some mix or, and better, the mix is a thing all of its own.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

So, eugenics? I kid. I kid. Sort of. This is one of those areas where I think some people are going to be happy no matter what WotC does. They just have to decide which option will anger the fewest people (who are likely to buy their product).

That would be to just dump ancestry altogether and put the Tasha rules in the 2024 PHB. But that means you can't easily sell additional ancestries in splat books (although I guess you could have lists of more options, but that's less easy to grab and run with).

 

[Remathilis]

How about

You are MORTAL. Mortals come in innumerable variations but all share a few common traits. All mortals are born, age, and will eventually die. They tend to have humanoid forms including (but not limited to) a head with a brain, a torso, a pair of arms and a pair of legs. Their appearances vary by geography, heritage, culture, and self-expression.

As a mortal, pick N number of the following traits that your particular character has. Then pick X number of traits off the next list.

Close. How about:

You X amount of Lineage points to build your ancestry from. Below are a number of abilities you can pick to represent your species and culture. Each ability has a cost. You may purchase these abilities to create your specific character. You can physically resemble one of the myriad of folk from the D&D world or be a unique creation.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I get why you're saying that, because you're only thinking about the mechanics, not The Implication. And that's where WotC were at too. Only thinking about the mechanics, not The Implication - I presume someone white came up with this take (not talking about you, I mean at WotC), because I don't think a mixed person would have ever gone for "You are 100% of one parent, in terms of what you can do".

Never ascribe to lack of racial perspective what can way more easily be ascribed to an overly simplistic design philosophy.

I can see plenty of my relatives just going 'welp, just pick one' without thinking it through without considering what it says about them until it's pointed out. Hell, a lot of my relatives said 'just pick one' when I came home complaining about the narrow choices I had to pick from on my standardized tests. And I'm third generation mixed.

 

[Aldarc]

Racial modifiers are one thing, racial traits another - and more important.

But. There's a real niche that half-elves (and to a lesser extent half orcs) were hitting; the second generation immigrant. The people who talk one language at home and another at school and with their friends. And they don't actually fit properly in either culture unless there are enough of them to be their own subculture; they've grown up in the country their parents immigrated to so they don't fit in their parents' birth country, but by the same token their parents keep home and frequently speak the language they grew up with at home and they pick a lot up from that. A child of two worlds.

In D&D that normally maps to half-elves and the like. Neither one thing nor the other but distinctively a mix.

I generally saw the half-elves niche as similar to the Dunedain or Numenoreans or even Atlanteans. They were not as long-lived as elves, but they lived longer than ordinary men. Similarly, in Tolkien's view of things, they were often more charismatic than either regular humans or even some elves, usually Noldor precluded there.

WotC's change regarding half-elves also seems a bit at odds with the identity of the Khoravar (half-elves) in Eberron, who saw their own identity as not half-elves or half-humans per se but as the distinct children of Khorvaire, with both elves and humans being migrants to the continent of Khorvaire from Xen'drik and Sarlona, respectively. The whole idea of mixed heritages like the Khoravar having to choose either elf or human as their species kind of flies in the face of that narrative of having a separate and distinct identity from either elf or human.