Arbitrary Half-Races

This has been on my list of mechanics to work out for quite a while now. Recently, I realized I essentially already did the legwork when I split race and class. The whole idea there was to use races as a sort of half-class and mix-and-match. This post builds on that. Using that as a baseline, you can create half-races of any playable races by allowing a race/race combination instead of a race/class one.

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Skip my rambling and get to the rules.

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Why do this?

In short: it's just like, my opinion, man.

The way half-races are handled in fantasy has always bothered me a little bit. Half-elves and half-orcs are the common ones, almost to the point of being an iconic inclusion in and of themselves. As far as I can tell, half-elves grew out of a misunderstanding of Tolkein and half-orcs came out of a desire to play as orcs in a setting where orcs were a monster or always evil - the latter has implications that I'd personally like to avoid discussing over the gaming table. Either way, these two half-races have stuck around and one of the first questions that comes to my mind is why aren't there elf-orcs? Is it just humans who can interbreed, and for some reason the races they can interbreed with can't also interbreed among themselves?

Furthermore, given it's a fantasy setting, why aren't there half-dwarves, half-gnomes and half-halflings? If cross-species procreation is something you're going to say is possible in your world, there's suddenly a lot of variation you have to account for. In a game with distinct, discrete races (or even more problematically, race-as-class) you have a lot of work to do. Unless you're going to say these specific half-human hybrids are possible but not other combinations. You can do that, I just always find myself wondering - why just elves? Even then, if elves and half-elves are distinct races/classes... what happens to their offspring? Is it a spectrum, or are they all half-elves from that point onward? Why haven't half-elves taken over?

You can, of course, handwave this by saying "genetic similarity" but that just doesn't quite jive with me. Most worlds seem to have things like chimeras which are made up of combined creatures dramatically different from each other. There are probably half-demons or half-elementals of some kind - they're not even from the same universe! In a fantasy setting where interspecies stuff clearly exists I find it more believable that it'd happen in all sorts of combinations. Especially if you consider your world "gonzo". Why does genetics suddenly matter now? Don't even ask about centaurs.

All in all it's just kind of weird to allow some specific half-races but not any others. Either humans and demihumans can interbreed or they can't. Go all or nothing.

Half-races from core races

Lineage	Human	Dwarf	Elf	Halfling
Human	Human	Half-dwarf	Half-elf	Quarterling*
Dwarf	Half-dwarf	Dwarf	Dwelf	Dwarfling
Elf	Half-elf	Dwelf	Elf	Elfling
Halfling	Quarterling*	Dwarfling	Elfling	Halfling

*Quarterling may sound incorrect, but it comes from the Halfling culture where your Halfling-half is the important half.

Rules for Mixed Ancestries

This is fairly straightforward if you are already using my split race and class rules. The process is as follows:

1. Choose (or rather, roll: 1-in-10 demihumans have a random second ancestry*) your two races. You get all abilities and bonuses from each, including both Ability Score re-rolls.
2. You do not choose a class. Your mixed ancestry is your class (for now).
3. When determining Hit Dice, use the largest-die race for odd levels and the smallest-die race for even levels. In the case of half-humans, this means always using your other race's Hit Die.
4. When determining saving throws, use the race with the largest Hit Die. In the case of half-humans, this means simply using the other race's saving throws.
5. It is recommended to allow multi-classing rules to give mixed ancestry characters the option to gain a true class, but be aware this means only reaching 1st-level in a class at character level 3. This lack of specialization is the trade-off to having multiple racial advantages.

*A character can (and realistically, probably does, somewhere in their long ancestry) have more than just two lineages but only the two majority lines are significant enough to grant class abilities. If you want to play a human-dwarf-elf-halfling that is fine, but your parents only passed down their dominant features.