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: 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. What should I do now? 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.
What happens with a half-half elf, like a half Isldar, half Shendar, or a half Avanthar, half Altalar?
My guess is that the character is considered a "half" just because it doesn't fully belong to an elven sub-race. The character fulfills the criteria for a half elf. Criteria for half elves: - Half Elves are classified as having any combination with at least one Elf parent (checked) - Where the person is considered "more Elven than other" (checked) The character wont inherit the abilities of proficiencies of its parents. The character gains proficiency with arcol recurve bow and elven aging.
So a Mansuryan-Songaskian (both being considered human) mix has to choose between racial proficiency boosts, or can he/she receive full boosts from both? Just needing clarification.
Wrong, as half human they get one of their parent's proficiencies. In this case it is either +10 in Mastigo whip or +5 Clockwork engineering
According to the wiki the Songaskians are human but it's also very vague in suggesting that perhaps they may not be human. This has been an issue I've had with the wiki. It's not definitive enough. I understand the desire to create an air of mystery and intrigue around the Songaskians but I think it should be more for providing solid truth. Maybe to preserve some of the in-world mystery we could put the plain ol' flat out truth in a spoiler section on the Songaskian page, maybe as knowledge held by those characters who are "educated" on these people. It's hard to create a character the way the wiki reads now, in my opinion.
As Grimmy stated and the Wiki states: "Half Human are classified as any combination with at least one Human parent where the person is considered "more Human than other"...Note, the category here refers to Half-Human, not Half-Ailor. This is because all Sihai (formerly ch'ien-ji), Qadir, Dwarves, and Songaskia are considered "Human Races", and as such have the same interbreeding rules. If a Half-Qadir Half-Elf were however raised away from Ailor cultures, for the sake of ease of review, Proficiency Bonuses would still apply a single Ailor Culture, and none of the racial traits or bonuses would be inherited." Then can I suggest that you do not play a Half Race, which is a system we just completely rebooted. Play a 100% Songaskian, Qadir or someone else of full-blooded heritage first to make sure you like that race and what it has to offer before delving into playing someone half that race and half another. As for "those characters who are "educated" on these people", the Qadir lost 70-80% of their knowledge due to the Great Storm, and the Songaskian state itself has been zealous in their claims of solar divinity as well as sun worship, ignoring the past when they did not exist and the Sariyd Empire was even more powerful than them. Any information the Songaskians possess in regards to their origin is in the upper caste and hidden away, not to be revealed by any of them at this time, especially not now as the state recovers from both a Regalian invasion as well as an internal civil war.
