The Campaign Builder's Guild

It's always irked me that you have half-elves, half-orcs, half-dragons, and any number of other 'half' races, but no coherent way to generate the other logical half-races that should exist. What about the halfling/gnome? the Elf/Orc? Here's my attempt at trying to get a template for mixing two races.

If this has been done before, please feel free to tell me.

Half-
Half- is an inherited template that can be applied to a male and female of any two creatures of the same type, hereafter referred to as the parents, and uses the female's base statistics except as noted here.

Type/Subtype
Type and subtype remains unchanged, and the size is halfway between the mother and the father's, or the mother's size, whichever is smaller. Do not recalculate base attack bonus or saves.

Abilities
Take the parents' bonuses and average them, then round down to the nearest multiple of two. For instance, a +6 and a +0 would average to a +3, which is rounded down to a +2.

Speed
The creature takes the speed of the mother or the average of the parents' speeds, whichever is higher.

Special Qualities
A half- creature has all the numerical values of its special abilities averaged together and rounded down, with the following exceptions;

*Darkvision is decreased to the lowest value of the two. If one parent has darkvision and the other does not, the ability conferred is low-light vision instead.
*immunities are retained unless immunities cancel each other out (cold and fire immunity, for example).
*All racial weapon familiarities are lost.
*spell-like ability frequencies are cut in half. If this results in less than 1/day, the ability is lost.

For all effects related to race, a half- creature is considered as both of its parents' races.

Alignment
Usually same as mother's alignment

Level Adjustment
Varies. The final number is up to the DM, as some combinations are far stronger than others.




I know I've probably botched this up royally, so let the berating commence.

Might want to take a look at the Advanced Player's Manual (Green Ronin). It has a system for breaking down races to the bare bones mechanics, and includes rules for building new half-races.

Have you built sample half-breeds yet? I may do so in a few minutes, as I think unless the template gives some special quality that half-types share, they might just be too weak (like half-orcs and half-elves are).