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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Veltharis ap Rylix" data-source="post: 9118315" data-attributes="member: 66357">I am perfectly aware that the '14 half-elf and half-orc aren't being completely erased - they're not coming to take away my physical books and they'll still be on Beyond as legacy options for as long as that lasts. But they are clearly being depreciated, and the way they end up handling mixed-ancestry characters in '24 is going to be the basis for how they deal with half-elves/orcs going forward.That would be fine if what they were proposing felt like it supported half-elves/orcs sufficiently to me. But instead, their proposal and most of the discussion around it feels specifically designed to take away focus from half-elves and half-orcs under the guise of supporting everything else, but in a way that fundamentally supports nothing at all. "Pick a Parent" doesn't somehow let you play any possible permutation of mixed-ancestry, it forces everyone to play single-ancestry and papers over it with "your character can look however you want them to" as though that wasn't already an option. As long as your DM was on board with it, your human character could come to the table with a tail, horns, and digitigrade legs without needing to change a single aspect of their game statistics. "Pick a Parent" doesn't add anything, it just formalizes what was already an option. You want your dragonborn to have a little bit of genasi in their ancestry? Sure, go right ahead - you're still using dragonborn stats, though. Want to play a half-elf? Sure thing, but at the end of the day, they're still either just an elf or just a human.That makes this whole effort feel like half-elves and half-orcs are being shoved into a sidebar for the express purpose of not having to talk about them anymore, as though they're uncomfortable acknowledging their existence without simultaneously burying them in "What about tiefling-goliaths, or orc-dwarves, or tabaxi-centaur, or..." ad infinitum. It makes it feel like the purpose of this exercise is specifically to sideline and deemphasize the presence of half-elves/orcs within the game, and that makes me concerned that they plan to carry that intent over into setting lore moving forward - which puts aspects of Eberron that I happen to care about on the proverbial chopping block.I don't need separate half-elf/orc stats in the core rulebooks. I just need a mixed-ancestry system that has substance behind it and doesn't feel like it exists solely to render half-elf/orc characters invisible and irrelevant.</blockquote>

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