A Guide to Creating New Half-Races in D&D 5e

The Half-Races in D&D are pretty cool, but there’s just one problem: there’s only two of them. If Half-Elves and Half-Orcs can exist, why not Half-Dwarves or Half-Tieflings? And why is it always assumed that one of the halves will be human? Why shouldn’t there be an Elf-Gnome person, or a Dragonborn-Orc? What the hell ever happened to free love? In an attempt to solve some of these questions, I came up with a pretty straightforward system for creating characters or NPCs that are a mixture of races.

Today’s article will discuss the following:

Selecting the Parents
Primary Attributes
Secondary Attributes
Examples

Selecting the Parents

The first step to creating a Half-Race character is to decide the race of the parents (duh). If you don’t already have a concept in mind, but just want to try using the system then grab your dice and get to rollin’!

It’s also worth mentioning that in this article I’m only going to using examples with the vanilla PHB races, but this system should work with any of the other available race options (if your DM allows it)

To select the races for your new character, grab a d10 and roll twice from the following table. Of course, if your second roll is the same as your first then just roll again!

D10 Race Table

Dragonborn
Dwarf
Elf
Gnome
Half-Elf
Halfling
Half-Orc
Human
Tiefling
Reroll

Okay great, let’s say that you rolled a 4 and a 9: Gnome and Tiefling.

The next step is to determine which of these parents will be the mother and which will be the father. During character creation, the mother will contribute the Primary Attributes while the father will contribute the Secondary Attributes (but more on that in a minute).

This is going to help guide us through divvying up the stats, and will determine whether the character will be:

A Gnomish Tiefling, or
A Tiefling-like Gnome

I’ve decided that my example character, Teddy Thomkins, will have a Gnome mother and a Tiefling father.

Primary Attributes

Now, we will take a look at the mother of the new Half-Race, as we will be taking the Primary Attributes – an arbitrary term that I made up to help explain this – from her. Primary Attributes reflect the main physical description of the new character, or traits that are noticed quite obviously.

Primary Attributes

Ability Score Increase
Size
Speed
Languages (Common is assumed)

Race	Ability Score Increase	Size	Speed	Languages
Dragonborn	+2 Str, +1 Cha	Medium	30	Draconic
Dwarf	+2 Con	Medium	25	Dwarvish
Elf	+2 Dex	Medium	30	Elvish
Gnome	+2 Int, additional bonus based on subrace	Small	25	Gnomish
Half-Elf	+2 Cha, +1 to two others	Medium	30	Elvish, and one other language
Halfling	+2 Dex	Small	25	Halfling
Half-Orc	+2 Str, +1 Con	Medium	30	Orc
Human	+1 to All	Medium	30	One language of choice
Tiefling	+1 Int, +2 Cha	Medium	30	Infernal

In the case of Teddy Thomkins, he would gain the following mechanical stats due to his mother being a gnome: +2 Int, Small size, 25 ft speed, and speaks Gnomish.

Secondary Attributes

Secondary Attributes come from the father and contribute to the new Half-Race character in a more subtle way. It could be the shape of the ears, a tint in their skin tone, or even the presence of small horns, tusks, or scales.

Mechanically speaking, Secondary Attributes consist of Age, along with anything else not included in the Primary Attributes. These can vary wildly for each of the races, but may include darkvision, damage resistances, minor spellcasting abilities, advantage on saving throws, or skill proficiencies. I won’t be going over every.single.one. in great detail, but here’s a quick reference for the Half-Race’s Secondary Attributes.

Dragonborn
- Live to be 80
- Draconic Ancestry (breath weapon/resistance)
Dwarf
- Live to be 350
- Darkvision
- Dwarven Resillience
- Dwarven Combat Training
- Tool Proficiency
- Stonecutting
Elf
- Live to be 750
- Darkvision
- Keen Senses
- Fey Ancestry
- Trance
Gnome
- Live to be 500
- Darkvision
- Gnome Cunning
- More depending on sub-race chosen
Half-Elf
- Live to be 180+
- Darkvision
- Fey Ancestry
- Skill Versatility
Halfling
- Lives to be 150
- Lucky
- Brave
- Halfling Nimbleness
Half-Orc
- Live to be 75
- Darkvision
- Menacing
- Relentless Endurance
- Savage Attacks
Human
- Live to < 100
Tiefling
- Darkvision
- Hellish Resistance
- Infernal Legacy

My example character, Teddy, would have darkvision, hellish resistance, and infernal legacy since his father was a tiefling. For flavor, he may also small horns sticking out of his hair, along with a skin tone that is tinted slightly blue.

That’s the entire process, pretty simple really. By divvying up the racial features, you can now make a bunch of new race combinations. Now it’s definitely not a perfect system, and there’s a few combinations that seem OP and some that seem under-powered. But either way it’s still a fun homebrew concept to implement.

Examples

Real briefly I’ll give a couple more examples, just to showcase some more zany combinations.

#1: Kashina (1/2 Elf, 1/2 Dwarf)

If the mother was an elf and the father was a dwarf…
- +2 Dex, Medium, 30 ft, Elvish
- Darkvision, Dwarven Resillience, Dwarven Combat Training, Tool Proficiency, Stonecutting
If the mother was a dwarf and the father was an elf…
- +2 Con, Medium, 25 ft, Dwarvish
- Darkvision, Keen Senses, Fey Ancestry, Trance

#2: Robbie Danger (1/2 Half-Orc, 1/2 Dragonborn)

If the mother was a half-orc and the father was a dragonborn…
- +2 Str, +1 Con, Medium, 30 ft, Orc
- Draconic Ancestry (breath weapon/resistance)
If the mother was a dragonborn and the father was a half-orc…
- +2 Str, +1 Cha, Medium 30 ft, Draconic
- Darkvision, Menacing, Relentless Endurance, Savage Attacks

#3: Kipper (1/2 Halfling, 1/2 Half-Elf)

If the mother was a halfling and the father was a half-elf…
- +2 Dex, Small, 25 ft, Halfling
- Darkvision
- Fey Ancestry
- Skill Versatility
If the mother was a half-elf and the father was a halfling…
- +2 Cha, +1 to two others, Medium, 30 ft, Elvish and one other language
- Lucky, Brave, Halfling Nimbleness

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