In one of my settings, the humanoids are all just descendants of humans.
In one of my settings, the humanoids are all just descendants of humans.
The genetic incompatibility of different species shall be respected.
Discussion?
That or you could have 'half' species that are possible yet sterile, like a mule (horse-donkey mix) or the close-sounding Mul from the Dark Sun campaign setting (human dwarf mix).
no half-elves and half-orcs please.
it's just much easier than the 1/4th elf mating with the 1/4th orc and giving birth to a completly normal human.
However it would explain minotaurs as offspring of lonely bull-herders.
No seriously, some intelligent races seem too solo to ever bear offspring, like medusas. But players only very rarely care about ancestry or even feeding possibilities of monsters down in the dungeons.
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Nope, not going to do it. And I prefer "simulation" in my games more then most. Well to a degree perhaps. Unfortunately the gods I release to plague the world may not agree with the "natural" laws I set forth. The gods of magic seem to enjoy using thermodynamics and relativity has pocket handkerchiefs. The various deities that take over the portfolio of love (etc) seem to take "life will find a way" and add "with our direct and intentional meddling." Love + Magic gods... *sigh* What's and Over-deity to do? Every time I look away to build a new dungeon they've grabbed another pair of creatures and are forcing them to make out.
Absolutely not. You can't get a make beaver and a duck get it... they did... it hatched... what does it... you do realize this is going to make the "mortals" question the divine plan don't you. No one is going to believe that a creature with a duck bill, webbed feet, fur, and a tail, will hatch from an egg. No! We cannot count it as a "test of faith!" It wasn't to "be" in the first place! Get rid of... why are you pointing at... Milly! No don't you even... ah! Now what are going to do with a Half-"Platypus" Tyrannosaurus?
And thus the Platosaurus was "born."
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No, sadly the problem isn't the jump off the reality train of cross species breeding. It was the attitude of player entitlement to any-and-all templets presented in any-and-all printed books is what made things go screwy. That and a general lack of gods being tied to these things and player "assuming" that it was "natural" breeding.
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Someone really needs to stat up the Platosaurus now.
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I like to think of the races as ring species. Some of the closer ones can and do mate but the further you go the more difficult it becomes.
My most recent home-brewed world had a rather unusual baseline assumption that I heartily recommend to GMs who want a change of pace:
The genetic incompatibility of different species shall be respected.
I don't know exactly how it happened (maybe Planescape's to blame, or maybe the 3.0 Monster Manual was the real kickoff point), but the 'default assumption' has somehow become that the only thing keeping cyclops/vegepygmy babies from happening are a few minor cultural taboos. If you as a GM are designing a setting, I heartily recommend 'enforcing' a more realistic (not totally realistic, duh) sort of genetics on your world. Let's face it - if humans could hybridize as widely as the PF baselines assume they do, pureblooded humans would be extinct after this many centuries - nothing left but a bunch of half-(every other monster in the Bestiaries).
(Yes, this means no half-elves and no half-orcs.)
I like the emotional impact and bit of pathos this brings to interspecies romances. (Not that a temporary species change or limited wish might not be a work-around, but those are unusual circumstances.)
Discussion?
Personal anecdote on my PC: Kyller Tiamatson is a human, but his father is a dwarf and his mother is human. As such he has all the game stats of a human with a slight "burly dwarf" shape. As an added bonus, he gets +10 to use magic device checks to "emulate race" whenever he tries to use dwarven specific items, also because of this "special" heritage, he is allowed a re-roll on any craft (stone masonry), profession (miner), or knowledge (dungeoneering) checks, taking the best roll. As a drawback, his appearance is not easy on the eyes and people tend to distrust him whenever he is lands where dwarves are not welcomed. Not only that but he is married to Aislynn the Great Druid, a half elf. The couple has two daughters and both of them are considered half-elves... how each individual GM handles interracial relationships is up to him. A human/dwarf cross should be rare at best, in the case of my PC there were some unusual circumstances and his birth was the product of an alliance that forged the peace between the human/dwarf races. now for that cyclops/vegepygmy... let's say the crossbreeding needs to be kept within the same creature type the exceptions are: outsiders and dragons. But make it fun, create a system, a chart with percentiles and rates of success assigning each race a base score and factoring up any situational modifiers, then roll. If you make the roll you can build your character. I would suggest, certain traits and drawbacks should be assigned.
Someone really needs to stat up the Platosaurus now.
that's what happens when you mess with too many templates...
I had a world where Halflings were Human/Dwarf crossbreeds where the physique took after the weaker humans, but at dwarven height.
Gnomes were Dwarf/Elf crossbreeds where the body inherited the frailer elven physiqe, but dwarven connection to the earth and elven forrest ties had melded to give them their fey-like nature.
Hobgoblins were Bugbear/Human crosbreed that had inherited the more regimented mind of a human combined with bugbear brutality to create the perfect soldiers.
Goblin being degenerates of the Bugbear/most other races. They are undisciplined and stupid, but bugbears can breed them by dozens from slaves, keep them savage in pens and unleash them as shock-troops, or keep them as pets in a similar way a human might keep a small monkey.
Yuan-Ti were used as Huaman/Naga offspring.
I thought about including deep orcs from Faerun as Bugbear/Orcs and perhaps Grimlocks as Dwarf/Orcs, but haven't explored that area much. Locathahs could be Human/Sahuagin. With size changing magic and energy resistances even lesser elemental races could stem from results of even more exotic lusts of humanoids and greater elementals. Flame brothers, hill giants, scum, kobolds breeding lizardfolk from humans and so on.
Creative fluff twists could create a world where genes can come to weird combinations (using the genetics in a simplified way where for the purposes of ggame race you either inherit after one race, or after another). The fact is that by basic genetics the crossbreeds could just produce the original races or crossbreeds in a typical 1:2:1 portions and only the original race or crosbreed with the original race. In case two crossbreeds met it could be just that random halfs combined to a different, already existing crossbreed of original races (gnome and halfling could have half-elf children for example). Racial purity of nations would either be nonexistent, a result of cultural taboos or maintained in spartan way...
However it would explain minotaurs as offspring of lonely bull-herders.
Are you familiar with the Greek myth of the minotaur? That's actually not far off...
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Half races are my favorite as PCs. They have probably lead 'interesting' lives that had some sort of 'disconnect' between their home enviroments and the rest of the world. Being a parent to such a child would take patience and understanding. It makes sense that disproportionate number of such children would become adventurers. I think the Dragonlance series did a good job getting to the heart of what it would feel like to be such a creature.
However, they should be rare, as in no nations of half elves or something along those lines. I might leave it as a player choice, or leave as a choice from the first one who asked, but not include any other half-whatevers in the game as NPCs, at least at for a long time so that it is notable when one does show up and something to talk about.
Basically, it helps make the racial dynamic interesting and something important to role playing rather then ho-hum. Basically, I wouldn't ban them, but make them exotic/rare.
I've thought of running a campaign where half elves/orcs were the only option and said characters are dealing with some in game racism.
All the Best,
Kerney
Personally I'm down with it being a human trait to be able to mate with most things, that and outsiders being magic being able to breed in unusual means.
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What is a pure human? You say in our world if humans were able to breed with other things like they do in the game there would no pure humans left... but there is evidence that there was interbreeding in between humans and other hominids... so are any of us really pure humans?
The real problem I have with trying to enforce real world genetic realities on a game world is that real world genetics are not likely how things work in a game world.
This is a world that has, unambiguously, creation involved with the races rather than evolution. Evolution assumes, and experiments supporting evolution try to disprove, shared heredity as the only plausible explanation for shared genetics. If things were created whole cloth there is no reason they would have any of the same characteristics genetically (as illustrated with DNA and protien functional redundancy, psuedogene redundancy, etc., etc.).
Anyway... I guess my point is that if too much real world is applied then things start to break down. The trick is finding how much "realism" can be applied with out having the GM and Players lose their suspension of disbelief for the game. Get to crazy and wild and some people have a tough time getting into things, try and make it too realistic while still having things that clearly aren't realistic and things break down for others.
Not sure there is a right answer other than find what works for you and your group.
Although, I did like Mage Evolving's advice to treat them like a ring species... that is probably the most elegant solution for trying to apply real world genetics to humans and demi-humans in a fantasy setting. Props on that one.
Sean Mahoney
In one of my settings, the humanoids are all just descendants of humans.
I did the same thing in mine. Human, dwarves and elves all spring from the same race.
Dot for further reading.
Sean Mahoney: I know that the situation you describe is pretty much the standard assumption for Golarion and most other campaign worlds - "hey, these hybrids happen!" Just started this thread to point out that a GM building his own world doesn't have to assume these things. It was just one of the memes of a typical fantasy world that I changed for that particular fantasy setting, but it turned out quite refreshing so I thought I'd ruminate about the possibilities of limited/no hybrids with y'all.
I guess my point was that to certain people trying to fit in some real world science (or more than the default) can be just as jarring as can the default for others. In my case, calling anything that has elves, dwarves, and orcs as being controlled by real genetics would be so jarring as to make the experience not fun. Don't get me wrong, I love me some genetics, but that is why they wouldn't be a ton of fun to only partially apply.
But, as I said, the right answer is what works for you and your group. My only advice would be to make sure that you aren't making the changes in a vacuum from what your players would prefer. For me it would be disconcerting enough that I would lose interest in the game, for others it is so inconsequential that they wouldn't care what you do on that front, and for others still it would make the game a lot more fun.
Sean
I guess my point is that if too much real world is applied then things start to break down.
I think that's only when
A) One sticks 'science' alongside an alternate contradicting system
B) A player or GM goes into too much detail thus derailing the plot
I don't understand how things start to break down from not having hybrids. (Hybrids actually exist in real life; they're just rarer. It's not really more real...)
All this reminds me of the chart in the 3.5 Book of Erotic Fantasy that showed what could breed with what and what the offspring would be.
Nothing really new in doing this...Kevin Seimbda did years ago with Palladium fantasy( and all the other Palladium games).
My opinion...meh either way. It is not a breaking point...or a selling point.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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This should probably be in the home brew section, but whatever...
The absence of Halling-goblins, half dwarves, dwarf-elves (Dwelves), and a million gnome crosses (because they'll try anything once) is a pretty good indicator that you can't just cross races willy-nilly. I know ogrekin exist which are half ogre, but I don't think there are tons of other crosses out there.
Honestly, the way the rules are written I think the base assumption is that things can't interbreed and the few rare cases they do are just flukes. Treat half elves and half orcs as the exception and ignore the ogrekin and you are done.
Alternately, you can even make it so elves and humans can't inter-breed, half elves and half-orcs could easily be the result of a one off magical experiment by a human wizard and the existing populations are ancestors of that.
Don't forget the quarterlings!
I believe they are three-quarterlings as you have a full human and a halfling.
but what happens if you have 4 three-quarterlings, do you get 3 humans?
and why is everyone assuming that dwarf-elves are called Dwelves? Can't they be called Elwarves?
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In my world, humans, elves, and orcs have common ancestry and retain enough genetic compatibility to intermingle, hence, half-orcs and half-elves (there is also the potential for half-elf-half-orcs but that is very rare). Outsiders can create crossbreeds because they are Mystical Beings who Don't Have Genes The Way We Think of Them (and because my world is inspired by a lot of mythology, and mythology contains a lot of part-celestial and part-fiendish beings, so I want that to be part of my world's paradigm). Dragons can because... well, I could go in depth, but it would be boring; basically because Magic and because Dragons, Duh.
But I have no interest in forcing that paradigm onto any other GM's campaign world. Each GM needs to determine what is right for his or her campaign world.
And finally, if a GM is sick of seeing umpteen crossbreeds with Things That Should Not Be, then I think it is the GM's right to be able to say, "I am sick of seeing umpteen crossbreeds with Things That Should Not Be, so stop it," and have that stick without having to resort to complex excuses involving trying to ramrod real-world genetics into a universe built upon mythology and magic.
I believe they are three-quarterlings as you have a full human and a halfling.
That only works if you assume that a halfling means "half-human". If you go by the half-elf/half-orc/half-fiend/etc naming template, it would be a half-halfling, thus a quarterling.
And since humans seem to always be implied it this, I suppose that would imply that humans are easy.
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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I believe they are three-quarterlings as you have a full human and a halfling.That only works if you assume that a halfling means "half-human". If you go by the half-elf/half-orc/half-fiend/etc naming template, it would be a half-halfling, thus a quarterling.
I don't think the mathematics work that way.
And since humans seem to always be implied it this, I suppose that would imply that humans are easy.
Well.... duh!
Someone really needs to stat up the Platosaurus now.that's what happens when you mess with too many templates...
Well unfortunately for "Milly" all my good books are still packed in boxes unfortunately "Milly" has found 123DSculpt on iPad and that it has T-Rex base model....
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I go with these cross breeds and attach a huge amount of bigotry and racism to the way pure bloods treat them.
Midden Elf: Half Orc - Half elf
Bog Elf: Half Troll - Half Elf
Plague Elf: Half Human - Half Elf
Evolution is a false belief system anyway...at superposition all life is the same life so the appropriate elder Gods in your Pathfinder should be able to create any change possibility needed to spawn exotic mixed races.
In a home-brew game i'm playing in there aren't any half races except for magically produced ones and they are always monsters or bad guys. That means no half-elves or Half-Orcs, Tieflings, Aasimar or Half-lings.
Also in the game is the taboo of not eating "intelligent creatures" shared by Humans, Elves, Dwarves and Gnomes that unites the the four "civilized races" against the "monstrous" races like orcs bugbears and goblins.
The "monstrous races" don't share this taboo and is the primary cause of friction between the "civilized" and "monstrous" races.
In the game the great wars between the "civilized" and "monstrous" races where more about obtaining a food source more than about conquering and pillaging.
The genetic incompatibility of different species shall be respected.
Discussion?
What do you get when you cross a hippo, an elephant, and a rhino?
A Hel-if-I-know
Tee - hee - hee! Tee - hee - hee! Oxygen, oxygen! I can't breath I'm laughing so hard!
;-)
In service,
Rich
www.drgames.org
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The genetic incompatibility of different species shall be respected.
Discussion?
What do you get when you cross a hippo, an elephant, and a rhino?
A Hel-if-I-know
Tee - hee - hee! Tee - hee - hee! Oxygen, oxygen! I can't breath I'm laughing so hard!
;-)
In service,
Rich
www.drgames.org
Hey Dr G. Still hanging from the bull-bar of Hum-vees?
I suppose you could go with civilized planar entities like 'the thing from planet yag' who was a rather civilized half elephant - half human.