D&D (2024) If there are no half-elves or half-orcs will there be Tieflings (half fiends)?

[Hussar]

Hey my elf is totally different. He has a 17 Dex instead of 16. You can just feel how elfy he is.

Going back to the very long post up there about a pretty cool backstory for using Savage Tides in Eberron.

Those are two NPC’s. They have whatever stats you want to give them. Plonk Fey Touched on both and you’re done.

People make things WAY more complicated than they need to be.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

Hey my elf is totally different. He has a 17 Dex instead of 16. You can just feel how elfy he is.

Going back to the very long post up there about a pretty cool backstory for using Savage Tides in Eberron.

Those are two NPC’s. They have whatever stats you want to give them. Plonk Fey Touched on both and you’re done.

People make things WAY more complicated than they need to be.

Yes those are a pair of NPCs I was using as an example, but the entire point is I was laying out the kind of thought process that goes into character creation for me. When I make the decision for my character to be a particular species (or mixed ancestry), I want the ability to have that reflected mechanically - there are always narrative reasons for it.

And Fey Touched doesn't give my character Fey Ancestry, it gives them Misty Step and an Enchantment/Divination spell of my choice, which is A) explicitly not what I am looking for, B) more than I am asking for, and C) costs a feat slot (one which would be level 4+ in the '24 rules, given the ASI attached) that I wouldn't need to spend if I could just build them like a '14 Khoravar instead. Honestly, Fey Touched doesn't even say "elf" to me, it says "I've spent a significant portion of my life in the Feywild and its innate magic has rubbed off on me", which is very much not the same thing.

Again, essentially all I'm asking for is the ability to build a Khoravar with Fey Ancestry without taking the full elf kit. I shouldn't have to adjust my character's background, feat choices, or class/subclass in order to make them "elf enough" because the mixed ancestry species rules won't let me.

 

[Hussar]

Again, essentially all I'm asking for is the ability to build a Khoravar with Fey Ancestry without taking the full elf kit.

But, again, the ONLY mechanical difference between a half elf and a high elf is two skills. That's it. Yes, yes, there's trance. Who cares? If you don't want your half elf to trance, then don't use it. No one gives the slightest. Forty years of play and I've never, ever seen trance come up in the game. It just doesn't matter.

And, note, if your half elf takes Perception, then the ONLY difference is one skill.

And, in return for an unbelievably corner case example (running a 3e module in 5e using Eberron), EVERYONE WHO PLAYS D&D can now play a mixture of whatever suits their fancy without having to futz about trying to homebrew an entirely new race and worry about balance and all that stuff.

I'd say that's a very, very fair trade off.

 

[DEFCON 1]

1 more consideration is fractionally less boring, than having 1 less consideration. Both may be boring, and yes 5e design would be but floating ASI didn't improve that metric.

If both are boring... with ASIs and alignment, or without... fractional changes are essentially meaningless and thus it doesn't matter if the game has them or doesn't have them.

As a result. If a player wants their species to be meaningful, they should do what everyone should do, which is to * roleplay * their character that way.

If a player wants their character to the pinnacle of elven culture (for example)... how they act, and speak, and behave in-game has so much more impact and will actually play out in the story than the few numbers that got changed on their character sheet from the piddling species mechanics.

 

[Hussar]

If both are boring... with ASIs and alignment, or without... fractional changes are essentially meaningless and thus it doesn't matter if the game has them or doesn't have them.

As a result. If a player wants their species to be meaningful, they should do what everyone should do, which is to * roleplay * their character that way.

If a player wants their character to the pinnacle of elven culture (for example)... how they act, and speak, and behave in-game has so much more impact and will actually play out in the story than the few numbers that got changed on their character sheet from the piddling species mechanics.

Exactly. If you want the fact that your character is a half-whatever, to actually be important in the game, then it's up to the player to make it important. Frankly, in my experience, half-elves are just humans that can see in the dark. Pretty much any half-elf character I've ever seen has basically no reason to actually be a half-elf. The race was only taken for whatever reason at character generation and then never referred to again.

I'd far, far rather players actually step up to the plate. The whole "man in a funny hat" problem isn't a mechanical one and no mechanics will actually solve it. Individuality of a character is not found in a Skill proficiency or an ASI. It's 100% on the player to make that choice matter. And if the player doesn't care enough to actually make it matter in the game, then, well, why should I really care what the mechanics are under the hood?

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

I already use roleplay to express all elements of who my characters are. I also do so through their mechanics, and this rules change deliberately limits my ability to do so for an important subset of them, under the guise of expanding representation and players' ability to express their characters.

If human and Khoravar mechanics aren't distinct enough to worry about, then we should have a discussion on how to make them more distinct, not eliminate Khoravar mechanics from the game system. And again, I use Khoravar as an example because they are an important component to a setting I care about, but this isn't just about them. Under the new rules, no character of mixed ancestry has a distinct mechanical expression of their particular heritage.

Even as the roleplay side of the equation is shouting "more representation" from the rooftops, the mechanical side of the equation is saying "only purebloods need apply".

I consider that internal dissonance to be a problem that needs addressing.

 

[Remathilis]

I already use roleplay to express all elements of who my characters are. I also do so through their mechanics, and this rules change deliberately limits my ability to do so for an important subset of them, under the guise of expanding representation and players' ability to express their characters.

If human and Khoravar mechanics aren't distinct enough to worry about, then we should have a discussion on how to make them more distinct, not eliminate Khoravar mechanics from the game system. And again, I use Khoravar as an example because they are an important component to a setting I care about, but this isn't just about them. Under the new rules, no character of mixed ancestry has a distinct mechanical expression of their particular heritage.

Even as the roleplay side of the equation is shouting "more representation" to the rooftops, the mechanical side of the equation is saying "only purebloods need apply".

I consider that internal dissonance to be a problem that needs addressing.

Part of the problem is that ELVES don't have overly distinct mechanics to differentiate them from other races. Darkvision is shared by dozens of races. Fey ancestry is likewise shared. Even trance by other names isn't that unique (there are a few races that either don't sleep or are immune to sleeping). That doesn't leave the core elf much to share with a half-elf. Elves are now the most mechanically boring race and the UA playtest elves are even more boring since the major difference between them is the type of bonus spells you get.

All the things that we think of as "elven" are either cultural or aesthetic (a long life of never aging is a core component of elven identity, but it's rarely a factor in play). Compared to something like an aasimar's celestial wings or a dragonborn's breath, there isn't a lot of elf mechanics to get excited about let alone share. Heck, most new elf types have had to rely on teleporting to have a unique mechanic.

I empathize with the desire to give half-elves a mechanical niche, but elves barely have one beyond "magical human with pointy ears". There just isn't enough space to even be unique, let alone share.

 

[Corinnguard]

All the things that we think of as "elven" are either cultural or aesthetic (a long life of never aging is a core component of elven identity, but it's rarely a factor in play).

What if culture was in play in 5e? Not just for the elves but for all of the other races in game. In previous editions of D&D, a lot of fluff went to describing what made High Elves different from Wood Elves and Dark Elves. But there wasn't much in the way of crunch that actually provided mechanical benefits, and what was there wasn't much.

 

[DEFCON 1]

What if culture was in play in 5e? Not just for the elves but for all of the other races in game. In previous editions of D&D, a lot of fluff went to describing what made High Elves different from Wood Elves and Dark Elves. But there wasn't much in the way of crunch that actually provided mechanical benefits, and what was there wasn't much.

If we want the game to make species mechanically important, at bare minimum we would start with the following:

Drop Class down to 10 levels of mechanics and give Species 10 levels of mechanics.

Right now in the game, your JOB is a hundred times more important than who you are as a living, breathing entity mechanically. Which quite frankly is stupid. So to my mind your choices are either make your Species and your job mechanically equal AT A MINIMUM... or we just stop trying to make Species mechanics a thing to care about. If you can't give Species the kind of mechanics it deserves, then just stop caring about it.

Because you will never convince me that having 7 or 8 distinct mechanics for Species makes them good, while only 3 or 4 is a crime. It's all a crime. So I just choose to ignore the crimes altogether.

 

[Clint_L]

Yes those are a pair of NPCs I was using as an example, but the entire point is I was laying out the kind of thought process that goes into character creation for me. When I make the decision for my character to be a particular species (or mixed ancestry), I want the ability to have that reflected mechanically - there are always narrative reasons for it.

And Fey Touched doesn't give my character Fey Ancestry, it gives them Misty Step and an Enchantment/Divination spell of my choice, which is A) explicitly not what I am looking for, B) more than I am asking for, and C) costs a feat slot (one which would be level 4+ in the '24 rules, given the ASI attached) that I wouldn't need to spend if I could just build them like a '14 Khoravar instead. Honestly, Fey Touched doesn't even say "elf" to me, it says "I've spent a significant portion of my life in the Feywild and its innate magic has rubbed off on me", which is very much not the same thing.

Again, essentially all I'm asking for is the ability to build a Khoravar with Fey Ancestry without taking the full elf kit. I shouldn't have to adjust my character's background, feat choices, or class/subclass in order to make them "elf enough" because the mixed ancestry species rules won't let me.

You seem to have very specialized preferences. Which is great, and the tradition of D&D is to just home brew what you need at your table.

The base game has to be generic enough to work on everyone's tables. For quite a long time, the game has only offered mechanics for two mixed species: human/orc, and human/elf. Let's be honest: because that's what was in Tolkien.

This new system is not perfect, but does some useful things:
1. It gets rid of a the "half-whatever" designation, which has some unfortunate IRL connotations that make WotC uneasy. You can agree with that or not, but I can see it from WotC's perspective of trying to make the game as big tent as possible.

2. It opens up mixed lineages to every species combination. If you want your character to be of mixed gnomish and elf ancestry, now that is officially part of the rules.

3. It doesn't require any special balancing. Letting players choose traits a la carte would lead to rampant min-maxing and homogenization as players settle on the "best" combinations.