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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 5615559" data-attributes="member: 29398">Thank you for being the first other person I've seen on these boards to even mention the idea of hybrids!The difference in my system is a half-elf + half-elf would give another half-elf.A half-elf + a half-orc, however, would give 25% elf, 50% human, 25% orc.  And see below...A lo-ong time ago I sat down and spread out a huge piece of paper on a table, then spent the afternoon drawing out a massive chart in an attempt to figure out just what could breed with what.  The result looked like a plate of spaghetti with all the lines connecting different races, but dammit, it worked; and I use it to this day.In this case, using the real world to go by is kind of pointless - in the standard D+D world there's too many races/species too genetically close to each other; there's magic; and there's deities and shapeshifters.  Put 'em all together and you have a mess that the real world just doesn't.Back to hybrids.  In our game they're not half-x's but "part-x's"; we break it down to 1/8ths.  So, you can be a part-orc anywhere from 1/8 to 7/8 orcish; ditto for part-elves; and we've broken down the stat modifiers to suit each degree.What this also opens up the door to is racial taints.  After I did the big plate-of-spaghetti chart I also dreamed up taints tables; at roll-up you can, if you like, roll d% - on anything particularly high you've got some sort of taint in your racial background.  Most of the time this is irrelevant - someone with a bit of Tabaxi in their background might have fingernails a bit longer and tougher than usual that become slightly claw-like if not trimmed - but occasionally someone might go nuts on the taint tables and come out with something truly wacko.  Best one I ever saw - I forget what race this character was originally going to be, but by the time its player got done butchering the taints tables she had a half-Skulk, half-Frostman!Another character had silver eyes, courtesy of being 1/16 genie.In one of my games a Human and a Hobbit - both were PCs in an active party - got together between adventures and ended up having a baby not long after...So, going back to my example above, if that 25-50-25 elf-human-orc were to reproduce with a human, the kids would be 1/8-6/8-1/8.  Were any of those kids to then reproduce with a human the grandkids would be considered human but tainted with both elf and orc.  And so on...Lan-"pure as the driven slush"-efan</blockquote>

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