Half-Races

[Ellias Aubec]

In my various play groups some people have played characters that were half one race and half another, but because the rules don't allow for any such combination other than human-orc/elf they had to sit with one of their parent races as their main one. I decided to see if I could come up with something that allowed people to mix any two races together to get such a half-breed from these unions.

Now this file I worked on is split into several different sections. The first is the first way of choosing a half-breed. Basically what I did was take each race, halve the bonuses/penalties to their ability scores and gave that to the half-breed. Type, speed, size, languages remained the same. Then I looked at the various special abilities and whatnot that each race got and tried to pick the more thematic, iconic powers of that race. Now I tried to get each race to a 5 RP value (which, yes I know is a not terribly great way to test power of races, but was a useful gauge to match races up) so that when combined together the half-breed of your choice would be a 10 RP combination and therefore of comparable strength to the majority of the other races. Now, some of these powers from the newer races didn't have set RP values so I had to compare and guess at some.

In addition, the draconic/construct races I ignored completely for the simple reason of their base race type value was 10 RP and so couldn't reduce it by much to make them fit. The plant races, I didn't count as their full RP value, as they have had a reduction in Ultimate Wilderness as to what immunities etc they now get.

The idea here is to combine two of these races, add abilities and you have your new race. Now this does miss out on the skill bonuses that the various main races get, so the second chapter deals with instead having the half-race stats using their skills and other misc bonuses rather than the big flashy iconic powers. This means that you can combine the two to get a more rounded half-breed. Choices people.

THen, since obviously some of these races combined have weird connotations if their parents had a baby, so I included a section on a few different ways races could be combined to make the new one, to get the new half-breed.

There is also a few tables in there allowing you to roll randomly to select your races, both a large, everything in it and a few smaller ones split by more sensible combinations (like avian for flying races, reptilian for the more reptile like races etc).

Finally, there are 4 half-breed races I made using this system, 2 using two of the primary stat blocks and 2 using one primary and one secondary stat blocks. Plus some background info giving an idea of how they came about and how their society works etc.

Anyway, have a look and let me know what you think. Now I know that some race combinations might be very powerful, but my hope is that the system I used has kept that to a minimum.

Half-Breed document

[Lady-J]

since you have aasimar and teifling on the list shouldn't you also add things like half elf, half orc and half giant? also what would you do for ability scores if you chose 1 primary and 1 secondary race combo as that seems to result in just getting 2 +1 bonuses with no way to shore up the defisit

[SheepishEidolon]

Ellias Aubec wrote:

the rules don't allow for any such combination other than human-orc/elf they had to sit with one of their parent races as their main one.

Actually Bastards of Golarion has official rules on that: Get racial abilities worth half the available RP from one side, add racial abilities worth half the RP from the other.

Your take on it is more interesting, though. Maybe it's good idea to offer it for free on the Paizo page?

[Ellias Aubec]

Lady-J, since the half-elf/orc are just a human/elf, human/orc combo, it seems kinda redundant to put them in this. I mean yes you could then get 1/4 elf etc, but at that point, why not go further and do this for all of them and then it gets so much bigger and harder to combine.

Per the primary/secondary, the secondary stats still get the ability scores, languages, etc, its just they are exactly the same so again seemed redundant to put the same information in a second time. I had thought I put a line to that effect in there somewhere where I explained how to put them together.

Sheepish, haven't seen that (although I do have that book). By offer for free on Paizo page, I presume you mean the store there?

[SheepishEidolon]

Ellias Aubec wrote:

By offer for free on Paizo page, I presume you mean the store there?

Yes. Well, you could also take a bit of money for it, but then you'd reach less people.

[Lady-J]

Ellias Aubec wrote:

Lady-J, since the half-elf/orc are just a human/elf, human/orc combo, it seems kinda redundant to put them in this. I mean yes you could then get 1/4 elf etc, but at that point, why not go further and do this for all of them and then it gets so much bigger and harder to combine.

but thats what aasimar and teiflings are too, half celetial/fiend and half any other race, so i was wondering why include 2 already half breeds and not any of the others

[Lady-J]

Ellias Aubec wrote:

Per the primary/secondary, the secondary stats still get the ability scores, languages, etc, its just they are exactly the same so again seemed redundant to put the same information in a second time. I had thought I put a line to that effect in there somewhere where I explained how to put them together.

could use some clearer wording when you get to the secondary stat stuff

[MannyGoblin]

Would Dwarf/Orks be Dorks?
Elf/Orks would be Elks