Kismet cost for halfelves

[Solaghar]

I'd just like to bring up the idea. Halfelves are supposed to be somewhat rare, and they do have a number of associated benefits, resistances, two languages, infravision... they're definitely above and beyond what humans have available. Halfelves are, I'd say, at least as common as humans and far outnumber more numerous races like dwarves, elves, gnomes, etc.

If kismet is based at all around code-bonuses then halfelves deserve one, and if kismet is based around RP difficulty then again, halfelves deserve it because, and I am not pointing any fingers but I doubt anyone could argue it's untrue, most are played indistinguishable from humans. The fact that there are just so many of them makes it difficult for them to face prejudices and other problems which should make halfelves in general a difficult race to RP.

I'd propose a moderate kismet cost of say, 50 kismet, just to ensure that people have been around the game for a little while and have had some chances to interact with the game, and hopefully cut down a bit on the number of halfelves out there who go that way just because it's free and for the code-related benefits of the race.

[Alvirin]

I have voted no and mainly for two reasons:

If Half-elves have a kismet cost, basic races that offer some kind of racial benefit should have a kismet cost as well, which would left humans (whom they have a extra feat point as racial bonus) as the only base race, and as far I know half-elves only have immunity against hold, they don't have either the extra feat that have humans neither elven language or elven proficiencies in weapons.

In some places of Faerun, being a half-elf is nothing out of ordinary (Silverymoon, Deepingdale, Yuirwood, etc) because many half-elves are driven by wanderlust is not strange for them to take an adventuring career, so seeing a half-elf adventurer (or more) should not be strange at all.

Few half-elves are raised among their elven peers so they behave mostly like humans with some quirks related to their race, but little more, in fact although maybe I'm wrong a half-elf who wishes to follow Corellon must apply for that.

Finally being rejected by is something not under control by them, they will not feel rejected as long other people don't rejects them, and if you don't like half-elves you don't like either if they are only a few or many of them.

[Glim]

I disagree with Alvirin and agree with Solaghar on one point. Because there are so many that roleplay just like humans, then the norm has because for a halfelf to act like that. I don't know any halfelf who has had to actually roleplay something concerning their race, be it a conflict, or prejudice or what not. It is similar to me as elves being roleplayed as point eared humans, while they should not be, because many of them are, it is the norm.

I am not sure if halfelves deserve a kismet cost because I do agree a bit with what Alvirin said that if halfelves get a kismet cost, then other races should have a kismet cost as well.

I do know that if they did deserve a kismet cost, then it should be 100 and not 50. As I do not believe 50 kismet is enough to deter or show anything about a race.

I remember hearing one time (before feats), that alot of people chose halfelves because they were the same as humans except they get discern. I do not feel that this is a good reason to choose a race.

I understand what you are getting at, Solaghar, and it is a good thing. Halfelves should have more unique roleplay for their race. They shouldn't just be slightly pointy eared humans. So people, if you are playing as a halfelf, think about how that has changed and shaped your character's life. How it has changed and shaped the way they think. This really is a good idea for any character, but non-humans more so. You play a unique race, so make it unique!

I haven't voted yet as I really can't decide yet. Perhaps more people after me can persuade me one way or another.

[Nysan]

Voted for small kismet cost. Humans are a safe starting point. Learning the basics and understanding that halfelves are not humans is easily done in 50> kiismet.

[Lathander]

I didn't vote because I am assuming that the concept here is a player-opinion poll. I feel that if I vote it might be taken as policy.

My personal opinion, not FK doctrine, is that every race other than human should require a kismet cost to some degree, even if it is small. Perhaps a continuum along which humans have 0 kismet cost and one of the really rare races (or several) are at the other end. Everything else would be somewhere along the line.

[Nysan]

Iy personal opinion, not FK doctrine, is that every race other than human should require a kismet cost to some degree, even if it is small. Perhaps a continuum along which humans have 0 kismet cost and one of the really rare races (or several) are at the other end. Everything else would be somewhere along the line.

Bingo.

[Solaghar]

I like the idea of a kismet cost for all races on one hand but on the other I don't necessarily think that we want to limit brand new players to humans only if they have their heart set on a Dwarf or an Elf. The problem with halfelves is that it has just gotten out of hand. With halfelves not an option, I think it would be beneficial to see more new players choosing Dwarves, Gnomes and Halflings as their first characters. Moon Elves in my opinion should have a kismet cost even higher than halfelves, but the RP requirements of Dwarves, Gnomes and Halflings aren't nearly as restrictive as those placed upon Elves, though that isn't to discount their RP, I doubt anyone would really complain about a halfling that acted like a short human for instance, as that's basically what they are.

[Nysan]

Dwarf RP isn't restrictive? Gnome and halfling, I agree. But dwarves are quite restrictive. Speech, behavior, magic dislike, mithril hall trading policies, ect ect. Dwarves have their restrictions...

[Velius]

What if Half-Elves just had a kismet requirement...?

[Glim]

I agree about dwarves, I would say they need a bigger kismet cost than even halfelves. Dwarves have a hard starting area and fairly difficult cultural guidelines to learn. Gnomes and halflings have their own brand of roleplay as well, though they allow for more leniancy than dwarves.

But then, I think too, that every race other than human should have a kismet cost, or, and I would more prefer this, at the very least a kismet requirement. I think a curve would be nice.

I always advocated a new player making the following just to learn the game:

human - basic and least rp intensive race

ranger - they were fairly easy to join, they were self sufficient and didn't punish mistakes too harshly, as well as the quests that were originally included were a good tutorial for how the mud functions.

Now, becoming a ranger isn't so much like that, I am mostly talking about pre-ranger council rangers.

[Velius]

As far as I know kismet costs are used to...
1) Keep down the population of rarer races and
2) to make sure the person making the race knows how to RP

Well, ( this may be a bit stretched ) I think that all races someone would consider common should turn into a kismet requirement and all rare races should turn to kismet costs.

Heres what I think...

POPULARITY should be kismet cost and EXPERIENCE should be requirement.

F.E. - /Half-Elves are POPULAR but still require EXPERIENCE to play.
/Elves are POPULAR but people play them as POINTY EARED HUMANS.
/Centuars are NOT POPULAR and the UNEXPERIENCED would most likely play them as 4-legged humans.
/Humans are POPULAR and EVERYONE SHOULD know how to RP a human.

What I'm getting at is that if the race is popular there should be no kismet cost, but if they are "hard to rp" they should have a kismet requirement.

g2g for now

[Dalanna]

Half elves are popular, because of this its more reason for a Kismet requirement.

The mating of Humans and Elves is frowned upon in most places, and in many places considered a crime, I forget where but I think its a Lynchable offense in one kingdom. It should not be common. Yet sometimes I swear half the population of PCs in waterdeep are Half Elven. I don't like the idea of restricting another race, but they really have become too common place considering how taboo their creation is in the first place, and a temporary requirement of Kismet to play them may help stem the population increase until their numbers are more realistic.

And as for the not playing the outcast role: Its very hard to play an outcast when you are being openly welcomed everywhere. I've yet to see non-half-elf players react poorly to the presence of a half-elf. I might just not be seeing it but they seem to be treated well by everyone.

My dwarf gets lots of looks and people finding reasons not to hunt with him when he goes through Waterdeep. One character spent about 10 minutes poking him till he finally got fed up and stalked out of the city. 1/10 people actually are willing to group with him, though they are all more than willing to ask for smelted ores from him. Which I am thankful dwarves are able to mine as it becomes really his only method of RP interaction outside of Mithril Hall.

Half elves should really suffer a similar "oh look its a half-elf... eww" but thats the community as a whole that would have to start that. After being accepted openly for so long... it'd be impossible to IC'ly revert to how racially biast the world really should be towards them.

[Kregor]

The mating of Humans and Elves is frowned upon in most places, and in many places considered a crime, I forget where but I think its a Lynchable offense in one kingdom.

More than one kingdom, actually. Sembia's persecution of both elves AND halfelves borders on the treatment of the Jews at the early period of the Holocaust (confiscating businesses and property, labeling of the houses and shops owned by them, etc). The city of Hilsfar uses elf-bloods as tournament fodder, forcing them into arenas as slaves. Many urban cities of the Moonsea region are quite racist and even violent towards elves, and halfelves as a direct consequence.

[Solaghar]

The largest grouping of halfelves in all of Faerun is in the Yuirwood according to Races of Faerun, a population of just over 5,000 of whom the majority are halfelves. When compared to Waterdeep's million residents, and most other major cities in the tens of thousands of inhabitants, you get an idea of how truly small the halfelven community of the world is, and how rare it would be for one of them to be raised in some sort of a happy, healthy normal life where they're accepted by everyone and thought of as normal.

[Selveem]

I'm all for a Kismet requirement but not cost.

While I agree, they do not suffer the same ostricism as one might expect, please remember that most Half-Elves are nearly unremarkable from humans (much akin to the Tiefling debate). Unless it is made FK policy to make those traits more prominent, then they really ARE just Humans with Elven blood in most cases.

Just a couple of things to remember:

1: Half-Elves are/were one of the starting races. There are tons of them in game.

2: Even players of Elves often don't play them any different from Humans.

3: Half-Elves used to be one of the most powerful races in-game (the ability to detect hidden people at will with no drawback).

4: Half-Elves are more universal than Humans in FK. They can go everywhere Humans can AND to places that are 'Elven descent only.'

5: The central hub of FK is Waterdeep. A place mostly made up of Good-aligned characters. Misfits there are generally treated pretty harshly. So, most of the people 'sitting around the Square' are very accepting, welcoming, and goody-goody.

6: Remember that the players of this game do not reflect the entire population of FK. So you meet 4 Wemics in your lifetime. Maybe you're just very lucky?

In some ways, we are all responsible for the way 'different' races act. With less reason to pronounce the traits and no true benefits or drawbacks, they really are unremarkable from Humans.

[Alvirin]

Waterdeep: Population: 1,347,840 (64% Humans, 10% Dwarves, 10% Elves, 5% Halflings, 5% Half-Elves, 3% Gnomes, 2% Half-Orcs)

That is 67.392 half-elves just in Waterdeep, taking in consideration that many of them would take a career than involves traveling or art expression, seeing half-elves wherever hang adventurers or the more special people, it would not be a rare sighting.

A place like Silverymoon with a population of 26,000, 10% of them are half-elves while 40% humans, leaving 2600 half-elves and 10400 humans, certainly here being a half-elf is nothing remarkable.

In Zhentil Keep half-elves doesn't mean even a 1% of the population, certainly here being a half-elf is something very unusual.

Since we assume that players are not the common citizens but adventurers or special people seeing even ten of them at a time in Waterdeep or Silverymoon (or other elf friendly place) should not be strange, while in other places certainly is it.

[Lukon]

Trust me, a 5% representation does not remove the exotic factor. Heck, I grew up in a place with a 30% hispanic population, but the 'common folk' still had no empathy, understanding, or relation with the 'different' group. Whether someone is accepted is largely a social construct.

I'm all for playing accurately with race relations(and do so with my characters that are aware...I'm looking at YOU, Estry. Chill out!), but I don't think a mechanical fix is viable and I don't honestly believe an OOC reminder can do much to change behavior now. We have our friends and our character personalities, and it would be unwieldy to suddenly remember 'half-elves are weird'.

[Kelemvor]

In my attempts to merge Alvirin's new thread with this older thread I managed to obliterate the original.. though I could swear I saw it on the bottom of this one before selecting delete

Apologies to Alvirin, mmm Tavik? and Mele for losing their contributions to the debate.

Please feel free to post again.

[Alvirin]

No hard feelings

First of all, I want to express my opinion that the characters who are seen when typing "who" aren't representative of the real Faerun demographics, a setting to which FK strives to be as similar as possible.

Regardless of it, still I think that when a race that isn't common in the realms, suddenly becomes all-popular and has 0 kismet cost, should have a small cost if just to make players consider any others options.

Is for that I propose adding a small kismet cost to this race (50), a cost that could be bypassed by characters with less than 50 accumulated kismet if just to not limit the number of starting races to others players.

Best regards.

(I know that my opinion has changed a lot taking in consideration my old previous posts but so it has changed my opinion of what FK means to me)

[Larethiel]

Is for that I propose adding a small kismet cost to this race (50), a cost that could be bypassed by characters with less than 50 accumulated kismet if just to not limit the number of starting races to others players.

I have troubles understanding that. You mean a kismet cost of 50 kismet. Okay. It can be bypassed by characters withless than 50 accumulated kismet. Okay. It does limit the starting races for new players, though. I do not believe that it benefits the game.

That is 67.392 half-elves just in Waterdeep, taking in consideration that many of them would take a career than involves traveling or art expression, seeing half-elves wherever hang adventurers or the more special people, it would not be a rare sighting.

You say it is not a rare sight in Waterdeep, and in my opinion it isn't as well, so why limit it? We shouldn't forget, too, that in FR whole realms of halfelves exist (Yuirwood/Aglarond) and many big cities with a huge population of halfelves (Waterdeep/Silverymoon).

If the kismet costs for halfelves would be raised, the kismet cost for any other more or less rare race (i.e. sunelves, wood- /wildelves, genasi, tieflings, aasimar/etc.) not to mention a kismet cost for halforcs, then, too.

I think, halfelves are the starting race for anyone not wanting to play a human but also not wanting to play something completely not human, it's the familar human mixed with something more exotic and also leaves a lot of space for differing rp-interpretations. It should be left at 0 kismet cost.