Heroes of Curious Parentage
A common trope in fantasy gaming is that of the “demi”. Be it a half-elf, a half-orc, a half-dragon, or even a half-god, there have been heroes of curious parentage since time immemorial. (In fact, the very first hero of a fantasy story, Gilgamesh, is one-third human, and two-thirds god!)
While this trope doesn’t seem to occur in Zelda games, that doesn’t prevent players from wanting their Heroes to hail from more than just one race. If anything, the franchise’s wide variety of strange and wondrous people encourages such thought.
But how do you square that with the total lack of examples from any of the games? In addition, how do you prevent a player from developing a knotted, convoluted family tree, just for the sake of min-maxing?
Below, we offer a ruleset for creating Heroes of Curious Parentage, and some advice on preventing those abuses of one’s ancestry.
Assumptions
For the purposes of these rules, we assume that when two people in a Zelda world have a child, that child is then of the mother’s Race, whether or not they inherited any particular traits from their father. In short, the child of a Sheikah woman and a Hylian man would simply be Sheikah, not “Sheikah/Hylian”. This helps prevent some of the obvious questions that can come up in these discussions, such as “why are there still Gerudo if they have to take boyfriends from the Hylian population”.
These rules also make no effort to answer the “how” or “why” of inter-species conception. Whether a particular couple of differing species can conceive a child is left as a discussion between the GM and the player, though these rules do not themselves prevent it. (So if you want to be the secret child of a Zora and a Goron, these rules can help make that a reality, but only if your GM is okay with that. We aren’t even going to try to explain how that would work.)
Primary & Secondary Race
When making a child of two different Races, first select a “Primary” Race. (Per the above assumptions, this would likely be the race of the character’s mother.) Just like usual in character creation, this defines your Racial features, as well as what racially-locked Feats, Techniques, or Spells you might qualify for.
Then, select one “Secondary” Race. (This would be your father’s race, per the above.) You may then select up to half (rounded down) of the Primary Race’s Racial features, and replace it with one from the Secondary Race. (If the Primary Race has 3 features – three bullet points – then you may only select and replace one.)
A Note on Minmaxing: Minmax-minded players may be tempted to try and swap a ‘less useful’ Racial feature (such as the Goron ability to eat stone and metals) for a ‘more useful’ feature (such as Rito flight). We strongly encourage the GM to curtail these efforts, and require that features be of at least vaguely equivalent use for a Hero. The goal is to end up with a unique set of features that is no more powerful or numerous than a typical member of that Primary Race.
A Note on Flavor: You don’t have to select any features of your Secondary Race if you don’t want to. In that case, having curious parentage is solely a flavor decision, giving you some fluffy aesthetic tweaks. It might still impact your Hero’s background and upbringing, and their outlook on life, even if it doesn’t impact how they function mechanically.
You are then encouraged to select a few physical details to inherit from the Secondary Race, to help differentiate yourself from the crowd. This could be eye or hair color, skin or plumage patterns, a size outside the norm of your Primary Race, or any number of other details.
An Example
Isiri is creating a Hero, but wants her to be unique. Having always been enamored with magic and fairies, she decides to make a Fairy Hero – but she also enjoys the idea of avian Heroes, flying, and participating in aerial combat. After talking with her GM, Isiri decides to create a Fairy with the Curious Parentage of a Rito father.
Isiri now has a choice for her Fairy Hero: which features to take from the Rito father, and which feature to replace within the Fairy package. Since Fairies have four features, she may replace up to two of them. While any possible combination is tenable, she decides to replace the Fairy flight with Rito flight – making her less capable a flier than other Fairies, but better able to walk and to glide. She also decides that her feathers molt like a Rito’s do, and wants to replace the free Spell that Fairies get – but her GM sees this as being too good a swap. After some discussion, they agree to instead have the molting feathers replace the ability to glow offered by the typical Fairy feature package.
Isiri then describes her Fairy Hero, now named Dove – human-sized, lanky, with the wings of a bird instead of the gossamer, insect-like wings of a fairy. Her individual feathers shimmer like glass in the light, though she herself does not cast the gentle glow that other Fairies do.
Demons & Inheritance
Due to their unique package of features, Demons deserve a little extra thought when it comes to inheritance.
A Hero cannot inherit a Demon’s ability to transform from a demonic to a mundane visage (or vice-versa), nor can they inherit a Demon’s ability to add half of their Combat or Willpower to the damage they deal. (If you want to use that mechanic, select Demon as your Primary Race.)
However, a Hero might inherit a single feature from one of the Demon’s forms – for instance, demonic wings that enable clumsy flight, or a preternatural Knack for the Flirt, Low Blow, and Predict Maneuvers.
When a Demon inherits a feature from a Secondary Race, that feature is available in both their mundane and demonic forms. However, this means that the inherited feature is replacing two features in the Demon package – one from each form. (Typically, these two features should be both sides of the same coin.) For instance, a Demon with a Zora father might always be able to breathe underwater, regardless of their form; however, that Demon might not have the typical To-Hit bonuses against Vitality or Concentration.
Growing Closer to your Forebearers
A Hero with a curious parentage might seek out ways to capitalize on what they’ve inherited, or seek to grow closer to a heritage they feel removed from. A GM may decide to award such a Hero with more ways to tap into their Secondary Race, usually as rewards for quests involving that side of their family tree.
This might take the form of granting them a Feat, Technique, or Spell that only someone of their Secondary Race could normally take. Alternatively, it might involve granting them an additional feature from their Secondary Race (or a feature from their Primary Race that they had previously replaced).
Racial features should usually be considered worth either 6 or 9 Tokens, depending on the power of the feature in question. (Some very minor ones – those that are mostly flavor – can be considered worth 3 Tokens.) When completing a quest to earn such a feature, as usual, the player should be offered the choice of taking the feature (or the racially-locked Feat, Spell, or Technique), or instead taking the Tokens offered to the other Heroes.
Mystical Heritage
Finally, a Hero might have a parentage even more curious than “two mortals from two different Races”. Perhaps they were conceived by a spirit in response to a prayer, sprouted from the fields after planting a dragon’s tooth, were created through a powerful magical Song, or are a demigod begotten from some deity’s mortal dalliances.
For such auspicious children, we present a few Racial features that one might use in accordance with the above rules.
- You may speak with, and understand, Arcane creatures of Limited intelligence (like spirits, ghosts, and some powerful permanent enchantments). This does not mean they automatically want to speak with you, or that they will tell you the truth.
- You gain the Magical Voice Feat for free. In addition, select one Song, which you also know for free.
- You gain the Elemental Specialist Feat for free.
Of course, the above are not the only ways such potent parentage could manifest – you might select an already-existing Racial feature to better demonstrate the curious circumstances of your birth. For instance, a literal “child of the forest” might have the Deku Scrub’s ability to ignore difficult plant-based terrain; or a child born of a demon’s pact might have a Knack for haggling, like a Subrosian.