Dungeons and Dragons has announced the future of half-elves, half-orcs and other mixed-race characters in D&D.

 

 

Dungeons and Dragons recently released a statement regarding the controversy surrounding the future of half-elves, half-orcs and other mixed-race characters in the popular TTRPG. These playable races will still be available. However, not precisely as players would expect.

Wizards of the Coast recently held a Creator Summit, inviting influencers and third-party publishers to a conference.

The summit got a little out of hand. But Dungeons and Dragons did give players a preview of features and changes coming to the new Player’s Handbook, which will be released next year. One such change was the official removal of half-elf and half-orc from the list of playable races.

Players were understandably outraged by this revelation. RPG half-elves and half-orcs have been iconic fantasy staples for years. Their removal also removes the representation of real players of mixed descent. However, in a recent post on the official D&D Beyond Twitter, Dungeons and Dragons responded to the outcry by clarifying that players can still be half-elves or half-orcs. They simply will not have different stats, nor will they be referred to as such in the revised Player’s Handbook.

The post referred back to the first One D&D playtest published last August. Unearthed Arcana content revealed a process in development. This would involve players playing a character whose parents are of two different origins. Rather than using a specific set of traits, like existing half-elves and half-orcs, players would choose the abilities of one of the parent races. However, they describe their character using the traits of both races. Despite this, players are still not satisfied with D&D’s response.

While assigning unique stats to characters of mixed parentage has always seemed a bit odd, having players choose only one parent to determine traits looks out of place, especially as Dungeons and Dragons strives to become more racially sensitive.

These fans believe that doing so erases the impact of their character’s heritage. At the same time, they undermine the spirit and importance of being of multiple ethnicities for both real and fictional people.

Fortunately, this D&D playtest content is not yet final. Although it no longer uses the One D&D name, Dungeons and Dragons remains committed to reviving the 5th edition for its 10th anniversary. Given that it is still actively receiving feedback on playtests, there is still plenty of time to change how it handles multi-racial characters.

Source: Twitter

Options for creating characters descended from more than one species are not being removed from Dungeons & Dragons.

Proposed adjustments to character origins have been open to the community since August 2022 and will be revised further: https://t.co/vKapNZMSIU

— D&D Beyond (@DnDBeyond) April 6, 2023