How Ancestry & Culture works

The Ancestry & Culture expansion breaks the features and traits for each race into two types: ancestral traits and cultural traits. Thus a gnome raised in a dwarvish culture would have a gnome’s ancestral traits, and a dwarf’s cultural traits. See the expansion itself for the breakdowns.
This also works for different “sub-races” or ethnicities. For instance, all elves have the same ancestral traits, but high elves and wood elves have different cultural traits. This structure allows much more mixing of ancestries, between two or more races. How that works is summarized below.

Mixed-ancestry for characters

Ancestral traits

• Age. Pick a lifespan between the two races
• Size. Pick the listed size from your one of your chosen ancestries
• Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet, unless both of your chosen ancestries have a base speed of 25 feet, or your size is Small, in which case your base walking speed is 25 feet.
• Darkvision. As long as one of your ancestries has the Darkvision trait, you may have darkvision as well, if you choose.
• Additional Ancestral Traits. You may select one other ancestral trait from each of your two chosen ancestries.

Diverse Cultural Traits (pluralistic communities)

People of mixed ancestries are most often found in multicultural communities where elves, humans, dwarves, and halflings, among others, live together. Anyone of any ancestry can be found in such communities, which is one of the strengths of such cultures.

• Ability Score Increase. Your Charisma score increases by 2, and two other ability scores of your choice increase by 1.
• Skill Versatility. You gain proficiency in two skills of your choice.
• Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and two extra languages of your choice that might be spoken in your community.

A Malfa example of mixed-race

The Maveren are half-sea-elves and their descendants who control the city. "Maveren" is a social/cultural identity, not a racial one; it’s possible for anyone to become Maver (though hard, and hasn’t happened in more than a hundred years), and it’s possible for Maveren to be stripped of their status. Most Maveren are descended in part from the original settlers/raiders, but not all; and some people with sea-elf background are from families that stopped being Maver years ago.

Sea-elf/human traits

Everyone descended from sea elves has these traits.

• Darkvision
• Age – the original children of sea elves might live to be over 500 years. The more short-lived ancestry a person has, the shorter the life span.

Ancestral traits (pick one)

People who are descended from sea elves, whether their family is currently Maver or not, have one of these traits.

• Fey Ancestry. You have advantage on saving throws against being charmed, and magic can’t put you to sleep.
• Keen Senses. You have proficiency in the Perception skill.
• Waterbreathing & swimming speed. You can breathe in water as well as air, and your swimming speed is the same as your base movement speed.

Maveren cultural traits

People who were born and raised Maveren have all of these.

• Weapons training: longbow and saber (rapier that does slashing damage)
• Friend of the sea. You can communicate simple ideas to any Beast that has a swimming speed
• Languages: Common, Elven, and Aquan
• Trance. Elves don’t need to sleep. Instead, they meditate deeply, remaining semiconscious, for 4 hours a day.

Malfa people who are not Maver have the cultural traits below, unless they were raised in some specific subculture (i.e. there might be a small colony of unassimilated Dwarves). Maveren thralls might have either Maveren or generic Malfa traits, as worked out by the DM and player.

Generic Malfa cultural traits

Non-Maveren natives of Malfa have all of these.

• Ability Score Increase. Increase Charisma by 2, and one other ability score by 1
• Skills: add 2 skills of your choice
• Languages: Common and 2 additional languages