Has there been any talk of mixing these species, like a nod to half-orcs and half-elves?
A Kasatha and a Vesk fall in love, by the Starfinder age I would hope that geneticists would have figured out how to make the adorable four armed reptilian baby! I always wanted to play a half-dwarf or a gnome-ling in Pathfinder.
Has there been any talk of mixing these species, like a nod to half-orcs and half-elves?
A Kasatha and a Vesk fall in love, by the Starfinder age I would hope that geneticists would have figured out how to make the adorable four armed reptilian baby! I always wanted to play a half-dwarf or a gnome-ling in Pathfinder.
If not from Paizo, then most certainly 3rd party.
Eh. Evolving on different planets on top of the classification differences between mammals, reptiles and insects makes interspecies shenanigans a full stop (from a viability perspective, anyway. I'm sure Rule 34 is in full effect).
On the other claw, this is a D&D descendent, so... Owlbears.
So if it does happen, I'd expect laboratory-produced grotesqueries and not fooling around.
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You could implement this with racial archetypes. Ideally, a racial archetype for any one half-race wouod be interchangeable with any other race, though it would not be wise (IMO) to give away the human's free feat to just anyone.
So, you could perhaps rewrite half-elves and half-orcs as a set of racial archetypes that apply to one or the other of their base races as a prototype. The half-version of a given race would be more or less the same across all combinations, attenuated for power boosts resulting from synergy of otherwise uncombined racial abilities.
In this way you could work out what a kasatha-vesk might look like on paper.
In star trek next gen there is one Klingon, who I unfortunately can't remember the name of, who was half human. She said that while the physiology of Klingons and humans are incompatible, with a bit of help if works genetically.
Well uh, Worf once said he would "break" human women if he tried to...
Do with that what you will.
Well uh, Worf once said he would "break" human women if he tried to...
Do with that what you will.
That was because of the Klingon combative mating... rituals. After all, he married Jadzia Dax and though she was a Trill, Trill's seem very similar to humans in most respects, especially when you consider all the inter-species romantic conquests that came up in Dax's past - and I don't just mean Jadzia. Also, Worf and Jadzia starting making frequent trips to the Doctor after they started going out. Because of that, I think that the "breaking" Worf was talking about had more to do with the cultural norms of violent Klingon mating rituals than with Klingon physiology or biology.
I agree, a racial archetype system of "half-race puzzle pieces" would work best. Though a handful of variants of the halves might be needed so when there is conflicting over lap with one of the variant halves you'd be forced to take a specific other one. This could potentially help the power of some racial pieces getting too generously combined.
This would definitely all be products of lab spliced genomes, grown where ever. Gattaca level babies or hell, put them all in the Bene Tleilaxu Axlotl tanks if you want a messed up background story.
I instantly thought of this thread when I saw this!
To mix incompatible races, you could start with any single race (as in most cases you need an individual to be mostly of one race to be viable) and add traits or 1st level feats to acquire characteristics of other races. Maybe a more generalized Racial Heritage feat would be a good starting point?
If we were to use Spock from Star Trek as an example, we could build him as a Vulcan and select Racial Genetics (Human) as his initial feat. I am not sure what we would follow it up with, as in game terms he seems to have picked up human vulnerabilities without human benefits.
To mix incompatible races, you could start with any single race (as in most cases you need an individual to be mostly of one race to be viable) and add traits or 1st level feats to acquire characteristics of other races. Maybe a more generalized Racial Heritage feat would be a good starting point?
If we were to use Spock from Star Trek as an example, we could build him as a Vulcan and select Racial Genetics (Human) as his initial feat. I am not sure what we would follow it up with, as in game terms he seems to have picked up human vulnerabilities without human benefits.
That's what I'm doing with my campaign once it starts up. It's basically you take the feat, and you're a hybrid now.
In star trek next gen there is one Klingon, who I unfortunately can't remember the name of, who was half human. She said that while the physiology of Klingons and humans are incompatible, with a bit of help if works genetically.Really? After the Kazon-Cardassian hybrid in Voyager, I kind of just assumed any two humanoids could breed in Trek.Lets make some comparisons
Humans are Humans
Vulcans are elves
Klingons are orcs
Romulans are drow
The Gorn are obviously lizardfolk.
I haven't seen too many halflings in Star Trek, no gnomes or dwarves that I can recall.
The Coridan representatives in the Journey to Babel episode could qualify as gnomes or halflings.
Tellarites are fairly close to dwarves.
Balok's race remind me of halflings.
Ferengi are gnomish...ish...
I think Ferengi might actually be closer to goblins.
Horta are clearly gelatinous cubes that got left in the phaser-oven a little too long...
I think Ferengi might actually be closer to goblins.
That's insulting to goblins!