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

[Hussar]

Can someone point me to the Level Up write up for half elves? My Google Fu is failing me and I’d quite like to see how other games are doing it.

 

[Faolyn]

Can someone point me to the Level Up write up for half elves? My Google Fu is failing me and I’d quite like to see how other games are doing it.

There isn't one. Rather, you would pick the traits of either the elves and (presumably) humans and one of the gifts of the other.

Heritages | Level Up

a5e.tools

So your basic elf has Darkvision 60', Fey Ancestry, and Trance. They can choose one of the following gifts: Mystic Rapport (one-way 30' telepathy), Prescient Vision (1/rest roll a d20 and replace a creature's roll in your turn with the result), or Preternatural Awareness (proficiency in Perception, can't be surprised while conscious or trancing, add Wis mod to initiative). It should be noted that High Elf, Wood Elf, etc., are cultures, not subraces--there are no subraces in LU.

Humans have Fast Learner (additional skill, half time to learn new skills) and Intrepid (1/rest gain an expertise die on a roll). They can choose one of the following gifts: Diehard Survivor (can go longer without taking fatigue from not eating, only die after 4 failed death saves), Ingenious Focus (can reroll failed concentration saves, can pick two Int skills and can choose a die roll of less than 10 as a 10), and Spirited Traveler (can't be opportunity attacked during a dash, can ignore first level of fatigue taken from activity each day, gain an expertise die on saves to avoid taking fatigue if marching for more than 8 hours).

I suggest you read the text on orcs to see how the heritages are treated. To whit, a lot better than in base D&D.

 

[Hussar]

I suggest you read the text on orcs to see how the heritages are treated. To whit, a lot better than in base D&D.

Huh. I guess they're all pretty and heroic. I don't see a single mention of racism or bigotry at all. Guess they fell victim to the twitter mob too. Funny that.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yes, I think we're talking past each other. Let's see if I can clear things up.

My question is, why are ONLY the half-races called out for being the targets of racism and bigotry in the PHB (2014)? And, really, you can go further back into earlier PHB's as well. But, why do the half-races need to be the only targets of racism and bigotry?

My question was in response to this back and forth:



The comparison between playing a fighter and playing a half-whatever isn't a true comparison since there are no negative consequences for playing a fighter. You are not subjected to in game racism or bigotry because you happen to play a fighter. So, why should you be specifically called out as a target for racism and bigotry, ONLY when you choose to play a mixed race character? The argument is made that all characters might be subject to racism or bigotry. Fair enough. But, again, ONLY mixed race characters are specifically called out as being targets.

Boggles my mind how hard it is to get folks to understand that we are talking about the core books, not home games or even published settings, here, as well.

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I'm frankly finding it rather baffling that asking that we not include the same language that real world bigots use to describe and treat people in the PHB is considered a big ask. I would have thought that this was a pretty minor thing really. Hey, let's not use the same language that the One Drop people used in our pretend elf game.

Apparently that's a really big ask though.

Apparently it’s an outrageous demand to not call the folk who live outside cities and don’t use all the same tech and have a very different culture and faith…savages.

I told you if you want to expand the idea of any heritage being potentially subject to racial prejudice, as opposed to just mixed heritage, that sounds good to me. I just want the idea to still be acceptable as a worldbuolding element for folks, and I feel presenting every species as a shining example of heroism weakens setting possibilities and reduces options for all those potential players WotC wants.

How? What exactly does it limit? What option becomes no longer an option? You can depict all the fantasy racism you want in your game. Eberron has it and uses it to great effect.

“People born in this culture are enigmatic due to their seemingly stoic demeanor, but care deeply for friends and family. What others view as aloof disinterest is a mask over a cauldron of intense emotional experience. Memories of their lost home haunt them in sleep, passed down through generations, motivating many to seek the world and collect news and share it with their fellows in great gatherings called Rookeries. Umbyllar Caligo see the world with a preternatural stillness not unlike the mist they can invoke…”

No stereotypes.

It encompasses calling orcs savage and brutal.

As it should.

Calling kender kleptomaniacs.

Sure.

Calling drow treacherous and deceitful.

Of course! that’s a super weird thing to have in the game that makes the game look racist.

And on and on. That "ask" (which is usually framed as a demand, with the underlying implication that there's no acceptable reason for refusing)

There isn’t.

is reasonable only in how it sounds, not what it wants.

It’s reasonable on every level, in fact.

One: Why is "subjected to prejudice" a good way to describe a race? "Of course people don't like you; it's your fault for being a half-elf." That's just victim-blaming. If anything, other races should have "prone to being bigots" as their descriptor.

This so much. If elves are racist jerks just say that. I can work with that. Why is it in the description of halfelves?

Two: Why do you assume that, in a fantasy world that often includes anthropomorphic animals and humanoid elementals and fey creatures and sentient slimes, that it's somehow realistic that people would be prejudiced against half-whatevers? It would be equally realistic to say that they are more accepted than their full-blooded kin are, since at least they're half-"our" people.

Absolutely.

How about don't say "is discriminated against"? Do elves and humans discriminate against half-elves? Then say that in the description of the elves and humans.Unless you are trying to say that there is something inherently magical about half-elves that magically causes people around them to dislike them (like the Disquiet from Promethean: the Created), then the prejudice is entirely due to failings on the part of the elves and humans. What is it about the elves and humans that make them be prejudiced against elf/human children?

Also, there are lots of ways to describe "negatives" in a race without being offensive. Part of that is trying to look at the race as a neutral observer, not as someone who assumes that there is a specific baseline from which all deviations are good or bad. Look at the Stoneworthy culture from Level Up. "Civilizations can thrive without developing metallurgy, either by choice or because they live in stone-age cultures. Those from such societies are known as the stoneworthy. They are often adaptable and tenacious, with skills well-suited for adventuring." See how that describes a paleolithic society without having to resort to the words primitive or savage, which have negative connotations and which have been offensively used to describe certain (often monstrous) D&D cultures because it's assumed that there's a baseline of pseudo-medieval technology, and not having that level of tech is bad. (And, of course, both of those words have been used to offensively describe real-world indigenous peoples.)

And this all begs another few questions: Most D&D settings have at least a few intelligent, nominally-friendly races, and many have dozens or scores of races. And that's not including the hundreds of intelligent monstrous races. Many of these settings are assumed to have a sexual free-for-all. Half-dragon is a template in 5e; 3x had templates for dozens upon dozens of half-whatevers. I remember half-undead in 2e. Most of the sorcerer archetypes have "you have the X in your ancestry," where X can be anything from a dragon to a genie to a modron. So why would there be any prejudice against someone just because the parents weren't the same species? That literally makes no sense.

The only reason is because "that's the way it was always done," and tradition is a stupid reason for a bad thing to continue.

Damn right. Boggles my mind trying to imagine a world where Dragonborn are descended from drsgons (I prefer them as a separate related species, but oh well), and you could have a friend who is a cat person who is married to a bird person and they adopted a little frog guy….and somehow real world style racism is just…fully intact. Like…Lolwut?

The power budget comes from somewhere, and moving it to a feat is simply a different spot for it to come from.

New rules you get a bonus feat at level 1. If the heritage feats are level 1, the power budget comes from being a feat, and that’s it. No missing teeth.

I read the new species descriptions in the playtest. It sure looked like sunshine, lollipops, and everyone loves each other to me.

I can’t imagine how other than going in looking for it, or a pro-grimdark bias so strong that a generally neutral tone seems saccharine to you.

It’s literally just non-insulting neutral descriptions mostly from an internal perspective. There are even mentions of ancient conflicts, of evil cults within the Drow species and the fact that other Drow are right on the front line against the armies of Llolltllhll, etc.

The whole sunshine and rainbows thing is total BS that exist only in the rhetoric of people who want the game to becomes a warhammerian nightmare, apparently.

 

[Bedrockgames]

This so much. If elves are racist jerks just say that. I can work with that. Why is it in the description of halfelves?

In fairness to your point, the 1E books don't really get into this stuff I think. I just reviewed the Elf and Half elf entry in the PHBs, and those mostly just stick with core mechanics (from which you could extrapolate culture I suppose but still it is mostly just saying things like what weapons they get bonuses on and what classes they can be). Same with the half elves. Even if you go to the monster manual (which the entries direct you to do), it doesn't really mention any of the stuff we are talking about (do keep in mind it is like 5 AM so take this with a grain of salt if I missed any lines in the 1E text). In fact all it really says is "They mingle freely with either race".

I would imagine though that a lot of people though were drawing on how elves were depicted in a lot of fantasy (not just Tolkien but stuff like Poul Anderson as well.

By 2E I feel like most groups I played with ran elves as fairly arrogant and disdainful of other races. In the 2E description it doesn't quite say that:

It does mention they distance themselves from humans and that they dislike dwarves. Also in the 2E description at least the reaction half elves face ranges from fascination to bigotry. So I don't think the situation was meant to be that the majority of elves were bigoted against them, just that they might have applied that same distance and caution they had for humans

I like the 2E lore, but I think the main thing is it is more interesting to keep half elves as a racial option at the start of the game. Honestly one of the things I think weighs down many of the later editions when you compare them with stuff like b/x and AD&D is there is so much lore in sections of the book that really are about making a character. The lore can be more relegated to things like setting books and the game works fine. When I read 5E for example, one of the reasons that I lose interest (and I have nothing against it as an edition) is the lore in the character section. It just doesn't really appeal to me (and there is nothing particularly wrong with it, I just don't get excited by it). If it were presented more like the 1E classes and races, I could find whatever flavor I want in them (and it would be a faster read I think). So I do think there is something to be said for a more neutral approach. There is something to be said for the brevity in that edition (at least when it comes to stuff like character creation options). Don't get me wrong the entries aren't just one paragraph or something, but I think they take up like maybe a page column of text or a quarter of a column mostly and they almost exclusively focus on class abilities and limits.

 

[Bedrockgames]

It removes narrative and worldbuilding ideas, maybe, but they're not good ideas. They're mediocre tropes that don't make much sense considering the rest of the setting.

I don’t think this is the case. As Inpokntrd out in my other post, you could have a perfectly functional PHB with little flavor in race sections and it could work fine. But if you have flavor, in my view these are good tropes and they have lasted so long because tend to resonate with people. I am not against doing new things with old tropes, but I do think that seems to be almost our exclusive focus these days and taking a “how do we fix or flip these tropes” as a priority is I think leading to extremely dull content that fails to connect to it inspire a lot of people. Again by all means, new spins and twists can be great. But I think the way people look down in perfectly good tropes just leads to throwing the baby out with the bath water

 

[Bedrockgames]

This is what I'm trying say. The proposed system removes good narrative and worldbuilding ideas from the public consciousness, if not from actuality, in favor of a "everyone gets along everywhere except for a few individual bad apple NPCs" philosophy. Of course you can handle heritage relations however you want in a published setting or at your table. But does the default  have to be sunshine, lollipops, and everyone loves each other?

A lot of the stuff coming out lately feels very ‘children’s show’ to me in tone.

 

[cranberry]

A lot of the stuff coming out lately feels very ‘children’s show’ to me in tone.

Given that they are targeting Minecraft players, "children's show" is spot on. They are clearly going after a much younger demographic.

 

[Hussar]

Given that they are targeting Minecraft players, "children's show" is spot on. They are clearly going after a much younger demographic.

So, show me the more mature material describing half elves in Level Up.

Oh, right, it's only chasing younger demographics when WotC does it.

Funny how WotC does EXACTLY the same thing as every other gaming company, but, apparently that's wrong...

 

[DarkCrisis]

I think an issue WotC is going to have as they try to “chill out” various racial tensions i their settings is some setting have had like Orcs v Elves v Dwarves etc for awhile.

You can’t just suddenly come out say like in Dragonlance, Half Elves are loved the world over.

Or in Faerun Dwarves suddenly got over their tension with their long hated enemies the Orcs.

Not without some serious world building like they are trying to do with Faerun Drow.

I mean I get they “just won’t mention it” and only those who have read Faerun lore from previous editions will see the sudden change with no real explanation.

Which IMO lessens them as unique settings