D&D 5E (2024) Should 2014 Half Elves and Half Orcs be added to the 2025 SRD?

[Vaalingrade]

Why change it away from being accurate. A feat is learned/practices. Even racial feats.

Because if we fix it, feats as a concept become more useful in design.

 

[Maxperson]

To me it makes sense, that magical traits happen while leveling.

For example, in Norse texts, two trǫll (whether risar or þursar or mixed) can have the same two parents. One sibling might be normal human size, shy of two meters, while an other is over ten meters. The difference mainly depends on which natural feature is manifesting the quasihuman shape, such as a mountain stream tending to take a human size shape while a tall mountain cliff might be very tall. The shape is a product of magic − and the more powerful a mage is, the more wondrous a manifest shape might become − such as extreme height.

So in D&D, if a playable Giant character starts off with normal Human size at level 1, but then gains a size category at levels 8 to Large and 16 to Huge, that is fine.

I really like this sort of thing. One character of mine was a child of Kord. Every level his strength went up and he grew an inch in height. The thing is, I want some of it to be represented at first level. My character started with a high strength and was close to 7 feet tall to begin with. Sure he was human sized, but you could see the extraordinary part beginning.

With those trolls, I'd want some sort of manifestation of where the sibling is going to go, right out of the gate. The mountain troll would be like 6'10" with hard, rock like skin or something.

The only nonmagical species is the Human. Everyone else has magical traits − even Orc darkvision. Even Halfling "luck" is magical. Some Humans are magically Lucky, but most arent.

I don't agree with this. Darkvision and luck don't have to be magical. Even if you do count halfling luck as magical, it's not really inherently racial, but more of a blessing from their god(s). Not all races outside of human are magical. Some are for sure, but others are not.

There are many different kinds of "elf". The Norse texts across passing mentions pieces together a fairly detailed concept of an "elf" that I want to make sure is doable in D&D. But Scotland witchtrial records present a fairly detailed concept of an "elf" that differs in important ways that I want to make sure is doable in D&D. Meanwhile Tolkien invented his own fictional elves. D&D can do these too.

The mechanics are fluid. An essentialist, historically racist, approach to mechanics is often wrongminded for magical creatures, and can interfere with reallife cultural concepts.

What matters is the character concept − then D&D 2024 offers several ways to express it.

Concept absolutely matters, but it also needs to conform to the framework provided by the game. If the game elves don't meet the Norse elves that you want to be doable, you'll need to homebrew some stuff to achieve that kind of elf as part of your concept.

The printed races are not going to be able to fit every elflike concept folks around the world will come up with. Tinkering will have to be done.

 

[Yaarel]

I really like this sort of thing. One character of mine was a child of Kord. Every level his strength went up and he grew an inch in height. The thing is, I want some of it to be represented at first level. My character started with a high strength and was close to 7 feet tall to begin with. Sure he was human sized, but you could see the extraordinary part beginning.

With those trolls, I'd want some sort of manifestation of where the sibling is going to go, right out of the gate. The mountain troll would be like 6'10" with hard, rock like skin or something.

Me too. At level 1, and even earlier during the background, I want to see a hint of the character concept already mechanically playable, even if the trait only becomes fully available later.

I don't agree with this. Darkvision and luck don't have to be magical. Even if you do count halfling luck as magical, it's not really inherently racial, but more of a blessing from their god(s). Not all races outside of human are magical. Some are for sure, but others are not.

A nonmagical "nightvision" would be something like being able to see in black-and-white if there is any illumination whatsoever, and for mechanical purposes even a single star or a single candle in the distance means there is enough light for nightvision.

It is possible to have a nonmagical Halfling, but then it should swap out the luck. It might even make sense to have a Small Human to represent the concept.

Concept absolutely matters, but it also needs to conform to the framework provided by the game. If the game elves don't meet the Norse elves that you want to be doable, you'll need to homebrew some stuff to achieve that kind of elf as part of your concept.

The printed races are not going to be able to fit every elflike concept folks around the world will come up with. Tinkering will have to be done.

All in all, I find the D&D 2024 Elf sufficiently flexible. Swapping the ability improvements was crucial.

Where the D&D Elf divides into magical cultures where certain spells typically prevail, it is simple enough to switch these spells for a different elven culture. Sometimes the best way to represent an elven feature is to design a new spell. It is ok to assume that most members of an elven community enter full-caster classes. (Similar to how some Human communities require all citizens to train in the military.)

Other elven aspects are environmental. Being ethereal, as a Fey being, is sufficient to convey the immaterial, outofbody, aspects of an elf. The only caveat is there must be a "Border Fey", like the Border Ether, where beings in the Feywild can plainly observe Humans walking around in the Material Plane. In 5e, the Feywild already "overlaps" the Material Plane, but the observability needs to be explicit. From the perspective of the Material Plane, these Fey beings appear as subtle forces that normally go unnoticed.

With regard to animism, these Fey beings, including the Elf, including Scottish and Norse concepts, are the souls of natural phenomena. The Scottish concept retains the Celtic identity of a sidhe, Scottish sith. These sith elves are the souls of literal fertile soil, and anywhere vegetation flourishes is evidence of an Elven community in the overlapping Fey Plane. The souls of soil have the ability to project and manifest a human form, and their virtual bodies are human enough while roaming the overlapping Fey Plane. They are the soil itself literally, and always maintain a connection to specific area of soil in the Material Plane. For D&D, when this Scottish elf dies, it returns to the soil and might later recover enough to reform a new body within the Feywild, possibly with a new identity. A Resurrection spell essentially recalls the soul from the soil thus works normally. Happily, these virtual bodies are human enough to have D&D stats, and can virtually bleed if injured. Their powers are magical powers that Humans can also learn how to do. Only powerful Elves are powerful enough to figure out a way to materialize into the Material Plane as a creature of flesh-and-blood. But until then, and while in the Feywild, they are virtually flesh-and-blood.

The same is true for the Norse concept of elf, except they are animistic souls of the sky (not soil), especially the upper atmosphere. They maintain a connection to the sky of the Material Plane. For them, the entire skydome is their "hall" and the clouds are their floor. These skyey souls can manifest a humanlike form, that is human enough within the "Border Fey". Thus there can be an "Alfheimr" as a normal enough viking town but that floats high in the sky of the Feywild, on a "ground" of empty air while watching humans far below.


Also @Mistwell. To be clear, I want rules to mix-and-match player species traits. Also for the sake of inclusiveness. In the meantime, I feel singling out the Elf "race" only is unhelpful, and the 2014 "Half" Elf redundant. It needs to be rules for recombining every 2024 player species.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I don’t see why it would need to. They’re in the SRD 5.1, which is still available to use, right? And they’re in the Creative Commons now. If they aren’t in the revised rulebooks, why would they be in the system reference document for the revised rules? It’s sufficient that the revised rules say any content not replaced in the revisions is still usable alongside the stuff that was replaced in the revisions.

Convince, you don't have to refer to two documents that way and there may be legal issues in mixing both SRD content in a future 3rd party content.

 

[Remathilis]

Telling a real life person where one parent is Korean and the other parent is African than the proper approach is to pretend to others that you're either Korean or African but not both, and if you have a sibling one of you could choose to say you're Korean and the other choose to say their African and that's "equality," is offensive. That's the heart of the issue. Nobody actually cares about what it looks like to fictional gnomes and dragonborns, the entire concept of inclusivity has meaning because of real human beings playing the game with backgrounds which might identify with game elements. And this choice might look good in "mechanics" but it's about the most offensive approach to take when considering the humans playing the game.

So let's put this into play. Let's assume 2014 rules are in play.

A character in the Forgotten Realms is a human. His father is Turami, his mother is Shou. How is that represented in game? Mind you, they're both human parents. No mechanical differences. How do you show the child comes from two different ancestries?

Next question. A Drow elf and a moon (high) elf have a child. They are both elves and thus able to breed (one would think) but they have different stats for their subraces. Different ASI, different traits, etc. How do you model the Drow/moon elf child?

Now to make things just a little bit spicier, let's say the DM has a "no homebrew" rule (PHB only or Adventurers League, etc). How does that change the equation?

How do you handle all of these in a way that is not offensive to people of mixed heritage?

 

[mamba]

How do you handle all of these in a way that is not offensive to people of mixed heritage?

that very much depends on what offends those people, and I do not presume to know, but I doubt it is universal either

Some might be fine with 2024 rules, some might prefer a separate half-elf, even though 2014 does not really address your other human/human or elf/elf mixes either. Personally I’d prefer something more like A5e but I would not expect that to necessarily be universally better either

 

[Remathilis]

that very much depends on what offends those people, and I do not presume to know, but I doubt it is universal either

And yet we have to create a set of rules that will be used by everyone.

Maybe WotC has it right: leave the mixed heritages out of the PHB and let everyone find their own solution to it.

 

[mamba]

And yet we have to create a set of rules that will be used by everyone.

sure, all the more reason to give it some thought and not go for the laziest solution possible

Maybe WotC has it right: leave the mixed heritages out of the PHB and let everyone find their own solution to it.

throwing your hands in the air is no solution at all, and saying it is not easy is not an excuse for not trying. They could have a decent solution and anyone not liking it could still homebrew. I'd say A5e's approach would get a lot better reception than what we got.

 

[Scribe]

How do you handle all of these in a way that is not offensive to people of mixed heritage?

You provide a few options (Half Orc and Half Elf) with an understanding that all of these species besides Human are fantastical with no relation to real cultures today and you let folks pick what they feel represents them.

But there has to be options to choose, and Wizards erased them.

 

[Mistwell]

And yet we have to create a set of rules that will be used by everyone.

Maybe WotC has it right: leave the mixed heritages out of the PHB and let everyone find their own solution to it.

We were able to get a good set of "make your own background" rules, but can't get a good set of "make your own mixed-heritage" rules, even though there are far more background abilities to pick and choose from than species rules? I just don't think this is as complicated as people think. They're using something to balance these abilities already, just put that something in the DMG and reveal the point value system being used already by the rules creators.