Are half-races an essential option in D&D?

[Shade]

I'd like to see them dropped as unique races. I'd rather see them as templates, feats, or some other background mechanic, or simply relegated to flavor text.

They had more of a place back in the ol' days when you couldn't play an orc, for example, and racial level restrictions were enforced. Nowadays, they seem rather unnecessary.

 

[awayfarer]

I'm not sure I see what the problem is. How much of the average fantasy world is grounded in hard science? Does your world include the theory of evolution? Seems like just about every campaign setting I've heard of attributes its creation to super powerful gods and such.

If we're generally willing to ignore real physics and accept entire planets birthed by magic, why is it so incredibly important to have realistic genetics?

 

[Dagger of Lath]

I'm not sure I see what the problem is. How much of the average fantasy world is grounded in hard science? Does your world include the theory of evolution? Seems like just about every campaign setting I've heard of attributes its creation to super powerful gods and such.

Most of my game worlds evolved sentient life or developed through well detailed magical processes. Plus I usually write down some laws on how magic works and interacts with the laws of physics.

... okay, so I'm a science geek. Sue me.

 

[Arkhandus]

Half-breed races aren't really necessary or important to the game, but they should be available as an option in the standard settings, given that half-elves, half-orcs, and whatnot have been in fantasy novels since Tolkien at least.

My Rhunaria homebrew has no halfbreeds except for the rare instances where a dragon or outsider mates with a mortal (dragons are immortal in Rhunaria, BTW). Most such half-immortals (mortal but with longer lifespan and limited traits of their immortal parent race) are shunned or outright killed on sight by normal folk, before they even have a chance to grow up and become dangerous. In the campaign, the only instances of halfbreeds appearing were two half-dragons, one half-gold and the other half-red, at different points in the story; both were PCs, but the half-red dragon half-human PC didn't stick around very long. The lack of half-breed races in Rhunaria hasn't had any negative impact. Though, orcs are a playable race in Rhunaria, mind, so half-orcs aren't needed to fill the 'strong but dim-witted' archetype. Rhunarian mortal races are simply incompatible in genetics and magical essence, when it comes to mating.

Quick Edit: Oh, and yes, Rhunaria is a world where most intelligent life evolved rather than being created. Only dragons and a few other highly-magical creatures may have been directly created by divinity to some extent. The world's dense magic accelerated evolution. Cats evolved into the Nari catfolk, who then later evolved into the other humanoid races over time. Much later, a few humanoid races were created through magical transmogrification of existing races, and such is how yuan-ti, dark elves, sea elves, kobolds, lizardfolk, minotaurs, and the like were created.

 

[diaglo]

Likewise should they wish access to nuclear weaponry, such should be granted by the mystical comet of X and divine light of the fifth moon? In short, is it within the perogative of the GM to set the limits of campaign setting and ask players to respect that in the creation of their characters?

have you played gamma world with me?

You used the word "emotional baggage" to describe the situation. Saying "emotional baggage" struck me as a euphimism for a mopey character.

that was my lack of a way to describe all emotions. anger, love, sadness, joy, etc...

 

[diaglo]

I.E. The lack of procreative ability doesn't necessarily impact on the two creatures mating. I was commenting on your statement "The question of what happens when mommy and daddy get together will crop up in some games" by refering it to a similar situation in the real world. In a world where half-races don't exist, two different species mating don't produce an exact half-mix. (horse+human -> centaur). I can see how my example may have been obscure though.

horse + donkey = mule

tiger + lion = liger

 

[Dagger of Lath]

have you played gamma world with me?

Maybe... And we'd never know (Mysterious wink).

that was my lack of a way to describe all emotions. anger, love, sadness, joy, etc...

Oh. Fair enough.

Anyway. Nothing wrong with half-races or telling stories that heavily involve them. I just think players sometimes need to go, "Wait, the GMs made this world up for us to play in. Maybe I should try to fit my character in." (correspondingly I think GMs need to sometimes say "wait, this may be the player's only contribution to the world creation, I should let them influence things for their backstory").

 

[pogre]

Gnomes are the least popular race in my campaigns, followed by 1/2 elves, and then hobbits. 1/2 orcs are actually somewhat popular as in the famous All-Power-Attack-All-the-Time-Barbarian.

 

[Dagger of Lath]

horse + donkey = mule

tiger + lion = liger

Horse + donkey = ungulates
Tiger + lion = great cats


Of course,

Human + elves + orcs + dwarve = primates, so...

But No HALF-LIZARDMEN DAMNIT!

Edit: Wait... Lizard - Man. Oh dear!

 

[mhacdebhandia]

In some ways, I think that the "traditional" half-blooded races are unnecessary and uninteresting, while some of the more exotic innovations of Third Edition, especially those inspired by the beginnings provided by Planescape, are much more intriguing.

Half-fiends and half-celestials (as well as aasimar and tieflings) interest me a lot more. What they imply about the relationship between mortal races and the inhabitants of the Outer Planes, not just on the level of "some of them are having sex" but on the level of the amount of contact and intertwined interests and destinies is very fertile ground for worldbuilding and for campaign arcs.

Half-elves and half-orcs, though? Half-elves are only mildly interesting when they borrow from the half-orc's "angsty child of A Certain Unfortunate Incident" schtick, like Tanis in the Dragonlance novels, and that's annoying a) in itself, and b) because it relies upon casting humans in the role of brutish, horrendous aggressor and further glorifying the over-glorified elves.

Like many things in core D&D that I don't care for at all, Eberron does a lot to redeem half-elves and half-orcs for me. The idea of half-elves as a largely self-sustaining, true-breeding race with its own identity (and a few dragonmarked houses) to its name eliminates the need to justify the choice of race with some kind of backstory explaining how an elf and a human fell in love (or at least had children), and the parallel development of the half-elf "Khoravar" race and urban civilisation on Khorvaire explains and reinforces the "diplomatic cultural chameleon" schtick that Wizards of the Coast tried to give half-elves in Third Edition.

Likewise, the fact that the largest population of half-orcs in the world is found among the mixed orc and human clans and tribes of the Shadow Marches culture gives that race a real place in the world, without the need for mealy-mouthed angsting over how they came to be. The simplicity of the idea that half-orcs are a natural product of a culture where orcs and humans like each other, respect each other, and get along in the same community is very attractive.

Basically I guess my point is that if you use half-blooded races, it should be because you want there to be some significant degree of contact between the two parent races. If you neglect this, all you're left with is a seemingly-disproportionate number of extraordinary love stories or terrible assaults. Sometimes that's great fodder for characterisation in the hands of a thoughtful roleplayer, but it's so much better to have a real place in the world for everything you use - or to not use it at all.