Player Options in 5th Edition

A unique world, with unique people.

In Sildair, the races are slightly different from the ones you find in the standard books of D&D, and so have their own stat blocks. These can be found under the entries for each race in the Races book. Sildair has fewer "beastmen" as playable races such as Dragonborn and Aarakocra, however, almost all races can interbreed, so there is alot more variety when it comes to hybrid races. The planned playable races for Sildair are:

• Humans, also called Brightkin
• Elves, also called Skykin
• Dwarves, also called Firekin
• Small Folk, a consolidation of halflings and gnomes
• Goliaths, called Stonekin in Sildair
• Tieflings, called Demonkin in Sildair
• Aasimar, called Angelkin in Sildair
• Genasi, called Devakin in Sildair
• Orcs, planned as a race with which you can hybrid, but also an option as playable, at the DM's discretion
• Shadowkin, not intended as a playable race normally, but included for the option, and the lore.

Beyond these races, the option to play a hybrid between any two is also available, giving you an enormous variety of choice. The races are being added to the book one by one, so if you cannot find the one you are looking for, use the rules from 5e and adjust them as you see fit, or wait for the wiki to be updated.

One Big Meltingpot

In Sildair, many many races live alongside eachother, and almost all of them reproduce in the same way, and can therefore interbreed. While this is opposed in many cultures, because of taboos, superstitions, and general racial bigotry, it happens everywhere, between all races, at least to some extent. Some civilisations aggresively oppose half-breeds, up to and including outlawing both parents and child. Most cultures though, simply discourage interracial unions, and begrudgingly accept them where they occur, while some cultures hardly take any note of it at all. Furthermore, some small towns and enclaves of civilisation, may be made up of one or several types of hybrid races, who have created a haven away from bigotry. Societies such as these can in turn become tribalistic and bigoted themselves, and consider only their particular hybrid-race an acceptable one.

When you choose a hybrid race, you decide who your parents are, and it will have no impact on the traits you receive, though it can have a big influence on your character background. As an example, if you create a half-human, half elf you decide whether both your parents were half-elves as well, or whether your mother was an elf and your father human, or vice versa. If you want, you could say one of your parents was a hybrid, while the other was a fullrace, but this will have no bearing on the stats you inherit. You can only make a hybrid race of two races. Say for example you decide you mother was hybrid dwarf/elf and your father was a human, you can choose if you get the stats of a hybrid human/dwarf or a human/elf, but not traits from all three. You can say your character has slighty pointy ears, or a more powerful beard of course, but only cosmetic traits like these will remain, while the stat-traits of the third race will have diluted enough by the second generation to have no further influence.

When you create a hybrid race, you take the physical traits of both parent races from their hybrid-race traits. Your height will usually be at the midpoint between the two races, but you can choose to be as tall or as short as either of your parent-races allow. If you choose to be 4 feet or lower, you are considered small. Otherwise you are considered medium. Your speed will be whatever the faster of your parent races grants, unless you are small, in which case your speed is 25 ft. Darkvision is inhereted only if both your parent races grant it, but if one of your parent races have darkvision you gain low-light-vision, which works as darkvision, but shortens the range to 30 ft. You will inherit some physical traits from both your parent races such as horns, tusks, skincolour and hair, but these traits are mostly up to you, as they have no bearing on the stats of the game.

Cultural Diversity

With the D&D rules for backgrounds, it is possible to create a fighter with a background as an entertainer, or a bard with a background as a soldier. With this in mind, it's worth considering whether an elf should always be able to speak elvish, when there is a system in place to give any background to any character. So instead, in Sildair, you choose your character's race first, and then you choose their culture: where they were born and grew up. If your half-elf, half-orc grew up in an orphanage in Dunethel, it makes no sense that they would know how to speak orcish or elvish, or that they would be proficient with a longbow, because one parent was an elf. Languages and weapon and tool proficiencies are now instead determined by your chosen culture. These can be found under the relevant cultural articles, for the different kingdoms and peoples of Sildair. You may still choose a background from D&D materials as normal. Consider your choice of culture a part of your choice of race.