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For a while now, we've been running into headaches with characters designed with really extrapolated racial mixtures like: 33% Ailor 16% Isldar 16% Cielothar 5% Altalar 30% Shendar, or something similar like. These mixtures are absolute hell to review, because each race follows its own set of rules and it is often hard to distinguish where this mixture stops being half Ailor and where it starts being half Shendar or half Altalar. To avoid stifling creativity, but to also give ourselves some more breathing space and ease of reference when reviewing these kind of characters, we're written a Half Races Page.
https://wiki.massivecraft.com/Half_Races
What this page does is create a formalized structure to distinguish between the different categories of Half Races. This doesn't actually affect the appearance of a character (which may for example still have pale Isldar skin, short Cielothar height and Altalar pointy ears but also have a Qadir mother) but makes them easier to review by simply calling it a "Half-Elf" because it mostly looks like an Elf, and to attribute the necessary traits and abilities to that as specified by the standard page.
Some additional clarifications:
https://wiki.massivecraft.com/Half_Races
What this page does is create a formalized structure to distinguish between the different categories of Half Races. This doesn't actually affect the appearance of a character (which may for example still have pale Isldar skin, short Cielothar height and Altalar pointy ears but also have a Qadir mother) but makes them easier to review by simply calling it a "Half-Elf" because it mostly looks like an Elf, and to attribute the necessary traits and abilities to that as specified by the standard page.
Some additional clarifications:
- The Half classifications are specified as "More X than Y" meaning, if expressed in percentage, that a Half-Human would be "More than 50% Human" where-as a Half-Elf is "More than 50% Nelfin". Even if the parentage is 1:1, a child will never be a perfect 50%, and a preference must always be made.
- Human and Nelfin racial categories are grouped. This means that Dwarves, Songaskia, Qadir, Ailor are all "Human", and all subspecies of Nelfin are Nelfin.
- Half-Elves have gained a new trait: Slow aging, though they retain the non-Elf parent Maximum Age.
- Half Human inherit the Cultural Ailor boost they were raised in, even if they were never raised in an Ailor culture, one must simply be picked for sake of ease of reference. They gain no additional powers or proficiencies.
- Half Elves gain a +5 Arcol Elven Recurve Bow Proficiency, and nothing more either in ability or Proficiency, to balance their slow aging.
- Half-Orcs still have their own special rules defined on the Orc Page, but also gain a flat rate of Proficiencies.
- Half Varran are not yet implemented.
- Orcs and Elves are now able to interbreed. Dwarves, Qadir and Songaskia too, but this either always results in a Half-Human or Half-Orc.
- This change is only relevant to Half-Breeds.
- Those who do have a Half-Breed Character, this change is relevant mostly to the Profiency and Race definition section. Races should from henceforth never say "XYZ mixture", but either just "Ailor" or "Half-Ailor" or "Half-Elf".
- In case your character is a Half-Elf or Half-Ailor, it is relevant to spend some time thinking whether to specify your character as a Half Ailor or Half Elf.
- If your character does get made a Half-Elf, and you now need to adapt the slower aging to your character, make sure to get your character re-reviewed as both their physical appearance as well as their proficiency will change.
- If you are not having a character change made to Half-Elf, then you can get away with just tagging lore staff to re-tag your application as approved, assuming you only change the Race specification and add the odd proficiency to the sheet that comes with it for free. If you change anything more than that however, have it re-reviewed.
