D&D (2024) Should 2014 Half Elves and Half Orcs be added to the 2025 SRD?

[Not a Decepticon]

Because I do not subscribe to your ideology.

What ideology is that, care to share with the class?

 

[Minigiant]

All aspects of species are dctated by the setting, ypu effectively demand forcing one idea as "biologicsl default" on all worlds, infinite potential and creativity be damned. This is how we got garbage that were 2014 Gnolls, where books were claiming every gnoll in every world is exactly the same as Forgotten Realms Gnolls, mindless spawn of Yeenoghu who only exist to kill. Even on Eberron or Mystaa, where Yeenoghu is not allowed and Gnolls were established as different.

No.

A D&D elf is a D&D elf.

If you create a setting where the elf has antlers with a horn attack and at level 5 learn gains butterfly wings and can fly... You can call it an elf

But it's not a D&D elf. It's a Cumagorian elf.

Settings choose which species are in them. However the species are still the species. You can change the species and keep the name but the original species in the SRT or the PHB is still the original species in the SRD or the PHB.

This is the part that people don't get.

The monster gnoll and the player character gnoll are not the same species.They just share a name.

 

[AnotherGuy]

What ideology is that, care to share with the class?

Outrage Deflection

 

[Yaarel]

Here is the issue

Setting neutral is not the same thing as biological neutral.

Actually, "biology" depends on the setting assumptions.

DMs who are emulating Tolkien and his euhemeristic reinventions, will make Elf, Gnome, and Dwarf fully reallife biological, effectively Human ethnicities with a hint of technologylike cultural magic.

By contrast, DMs who are emulating reallife folkbeliefs from fairy lore and various mythologies will explore full-on nonhuman nature beings.

Personally, I straddle the two, because in Nordic traditions the nature beings employ the same shamanic magic that humans do, especially outofbody travel and shapeshifting. Thus when an Alfr adopts a "human" body, it is a human body, with Human DNA and bleeds like a Human. Same happens if the Alfr adopt the body of an animal, like a swan or a wolf. Then it is a swan or a wolf. Otherwise, the nature beings are the normal features of nature themselves, like the actual sunlight or a particular mountain.

Elf still live to be 700 years old and have heightened senses no matter which sitting there from. So those biological aspects will affect them in every setting. Their coaches should change based on the fact that the old people in their species are over 500 years old and have seen areas grow and decline over time and multiple generations of younger races live and die.

Elves live to be 700 years old on average. But there are still individuals around who have never died so far. They are Epic immortals.

An elf we'll still have hundreds of years to practice crafts if they don't killed. So a elf civilian who lives in a relatively safe area and does not go out adventuring would be skilled at dozens of crafts. And an elf you would know several skills just by their biology.

Yeah. Any Elf who is older than 100 is likely Epic levels. These NPCs arent necessarily at Epic levels at combat skills. But they will be Epic levels at whatever they have been doing with their time as "youths".

Now imagine a half elf who has all of the mentality of a human but is middle age at age 100.

The concept of a "half elf" depends on the setting assumptions.

In some settings, the half elf can "choose" whether to be a mortal human (Beast) or an immortal nature being (Fey).


The Nordic assumptions are moreorless: if the halfalfr has a "human" shape, then one is moreorless a full human, even if an ideal one. They still have hints of their nonhuman parentage, such as excelling at any kind of magic. If choosing to remain part of the human species, they probably have an ideally long human life.

There are several stories of choosing which species a being wants to become. Barðr has a giant dad and human mom. The dad is risi with some þurs ancestry. Barðr lives life as a human, where he immigrates from Norway to Iceland. There he decides to abandon human life and become the immortal nature being of one of the mountains there. This complicates his relationship with one of his children who are mostly human.

When a nature being, Barðr is the mountain itself − the mind of the mountain. But he remembers being a human and often helps human who find themselves in danger while traveling the mountain.

A nature being can "manifest", but these are temporary shapes, like a D&D Project Image spell. The outofbody form normally has a specific shape, often bird who can fly fast and far. This form can manifest physically away from the mountain. In D&D terms, I have these outofbody nature beings roam the overlapping ether, including the "border" Feywild.

Imagine yourself a human right now having an entire extra lifetime at full adult capabilities.

Thats a half elf if you just look at age.

In a campaign where elves are normal humans who happen to have a better life expectancy. Then yes, the DM to speculate what their human culture would be like, if normal humans live that long.

But in a campaign where elves are otherworldy planar beings, then entirely different speculations can happen − and not necessarily involving the Material Plane.

I prefer the more far-out Elves, because they are more like the "virtual realities" of reallife technological acceleration − which is very important to explore right now. Because the consequences of acceleration are SOON.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

No.

A D&D elf is a D&D elf.

If you create a setting where the elf has antlers with a horn attack and at level 5 learn gains butterfly wings and can fly... You can call it an elf

But it's not a D&D elf. It's a Cumagorian elf.

Settings choose which species are in them. However the species are still the species. You can change the species and keep the name but the original species in the SRT or the PHB is still the original species in the SRD or the PHB.

This is the part that people don't get.

The monster gnoll and the player character gnoll are not the same species.They just share a name.

1. This literally flips the bird to Eberron, which does all races with a twist. So now Eberron doesn't count? Now any setting where Gnolls aren't inherently mindless monsters spawned from blood of a specific demon lord, is doing dnd wrong?
2. Last pragraph once again destroys the idea of playing fantasy races, since if I'm not actually playing the same species as all npcs of that name, what's the point of having fantasy species to begin with?

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Outrage Deflection

Do ypu're running in circles, are you aftaid of admitting you made a mistake this much?

 

[AnotherGuy]

Do ypu're running in circles, are you aftaid of admitting you made a mistake this much?

No, I'm happy to admit errors actually I do that all the time.
I made one earlier in the thread in my discussion with @CreamCloud0 - we discussed the better word for relatable would perhaps be familiarity in certain instances I believe. I'm still muddling through that.

I'm not running in circles.
The movies I mentioned are all Western with Western touchstones.

Dorothy is not the only human in The Wizard of Oz
Batman is not the only human in on the JLA
Jake Sully is not the only human in Avatar.

Everyone is human in The Last Samurai (except the horses who refuse to die under machine gun fire, similar to the cops in Bale's last Batman movie). So obviously the touchstone in that movie is not about who is human and who isn't human, but who is Western and who isn't.
To a Western audience the role of Tom Cruise is the touchstone.

EDIT: Which is why it is so odd to me with so many movies and series which have these touchstones in their stories in order for their audiences relate to a character or set of characters, you somehow refuse to accept that within D&D. What makes D&D so different do you think (for you)?

 

[Minigiant]

This literally flips the bird to Eberron, which does all races with a twist. So now Eberron doesn't count? Now any setting where Gnolls aren't inherently mindless monsters spawned from blood of a specific demon lord, is doing dnd wrong?

An elf in forgotten relative the same as an elf in Eberron except for culture.

Only if you have a dragon mark all you really different. And really if 5 ft allowed first level feats for species or origin Dragon marks would not be subclasses and you would just take a dragon mark from origin feat

Again you and many others are conflating culture and biology.

Last pragtaph once again destroys the idea of playing fantasy races, since if I'm not actually playing the same species as all nps of that name, what's the point of having fantasy species to begin with?

No you're not getting it.

The monster and the player character are literally not the same species.

One is a demon.
The other is a humanoid.

They share a name because the designers of D&D are to attach to tradition to rename anything.

But they literally are not the same species. They have two completely biologies.

They could literally be in the same setting as different species.
Much like an alligator and a crocodile may look similar but they are two different species.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

No, I'm happy to admit errors actually I do that all the time.
I made one earlier in the thread in my discussion with @CreamCloud0 - we discussed the better word for relatable would perhaps be familiarity in certain instances I believe. I'm still muddling through that.

I'm not running in circles.
The movies I mentioned are all Western with Western touchstones.

Dorothy is not the only human in The Wizard of Oz
Batman is not the only human in on the JLA
Jake Sully is not the only human in Avatar.

Everyone is human in The Last Samurai (except the horses who refuse to die under machine gun fire, similar to the cops in Bale's last Batman movie). So obviously the touchstone in that movie is not about who is human and who isn't human, but who is Western and who isn't.
To a Western audience the role of Tom Cruise is the touchstone.

EDIT: Which is why it is so odd to me with so many movies and series which have these touchstones to have the audience relate to a character or set of characters, you somehow refuse to accept that in D&D.

You actually neede a time to think how to move the goalpost again and how to yry to gaslight me here, didn't you?

 

[Vaalingrade]

The ideology that the Japanese are not aliens?

That's what biological essentialism gets us!