Ian ElliottIn the 5e-adjacent version of Nextworld, I used feats to add things like tieflings and assimar (you are an ancestry modified by a "born," "legacy," or "touched" heritage). Currently seeing if I can make the same idea fit into SWADE'S Edges. #Nextworld #ttrpg #SavageWorlds #SWADE
A born heritage means the character is actually from that other realm (think eladrin in 5e), but the realms that have this option have their own version of the base ancestries, so you can be a fae elf, a fae dwarf, a fae ogre, etc.
A legacy heritage means the character has ancestry from that other realm. You get less benefits than the born heritage, but you also don't get the bane that comes with all born heritages. Born and Legacy heritages can only be taken at character creation and never changed.
A touched heritage means something happened to the character during life that imbued them with some part of that other realm. This is the weakest of the three but it has none of the drawbacks and can be taken or changed at any normal time to take or change edges.
libraryogre@thatianelliott To an extent, that's really the standard races. Basic design value of an edge is +2. Basic design value of a race is +2. If I decide to be an elf, it's not much different than spending my free human edge on the package "elf", which is about as valuable as other edges, just with more ups and downs.
@libraryogre Yeah, the design difference here is in the fiction instead of the package. Doing these as feats in 5e let me define what ancestries exist while also giving ways to modify the ancestry. You could have an elf tiefling or a dwarf tiefling, etc, but they were still elf and dwarf first. It modifies the starting point instead of creating a new starting point. Experimenting to see if I can get the same results.
@libraryogre of course, 5e has a lot less explicit mechanics for that sort of thing, so it's an interesting thought puzzle to try the same trick with edges, using their more explicit mechanics.
@libraryogre I do want to thank you because explicitly comparing a race to an edge was not something I had thought of and gives me a whole new and, hopefully, helpful perspective to consider. Possibilities!
@thatianelliott You might take a look at 2e Pathfinder, which does this, as well. They have Versatile Heritages, which can be added to most other heritages, so you can have that planar-blooded dwarf or whatever.