I was thinking about this because in previous DnD games some players in my group have played the decedents of characters from previous campaigns, sometimes as hybrids. I was thinking since Star Wars is all about the familial it might be an interesting avenue to pursue for future games.

I know cross species isn't a huge part of Star Wars, and I don't have two cross species I am specifically looking at, I am just curious to see if others have explored this. Specifically what type of process might you use to create the attributes and abilities?

• My first thought which is quick and easy would be to simply choose 1 of the two stat blocks and just use that; and just describe the rest with flavor. Thus no real mechanical difference.

• The other thought would be if for some reason you really wanted to have both species Special abilities perhaps they start with -10xp.

Anything more complex than that just seems like its just a min maxing nightmare and not worth the time.

I'd approach it case by case, probably; come up with a new custom race that reflects the combination for each character that decides to play a hybrid.

Maybe if the parent species each have a statline with 3 in one characteristic and a 1 in another, you could pick one of the 3's and one of the 1's?

I would probably opt for a simpler "chose your stat line, then chose you're ability" mentality.

In all honesty I would sometimes ask for a different stat line then the suggested species if it didn't suit the character. Like if I was ever to play the son of my character (A Rodian FS who is raised within a mandolorian culture, the product of a one night stand that fractured the father's eye socket and made the entire crew think he had somehow ticked their captain off! XD) then I might ask for a different statblock that better reflects his upbringing; while Tobin was a weak willed materialist thrust into a war of good and evil way beyond his smart, yet ordinary mind, his son would likely grow up as a hard willed Mandolorian first and foremost, Rodian second and likely wouldn't have a will power of just 1.

Having players cherry-pick species bonuses sounds like potential MinMax fodder, I would recommend against it unless you know your players are going to be fair.

Were it me, I would create the hybrid from the ground up as needed.

I’m having this same situation, a player of mine is playing a former clone trooper and has it in his backstory that after escaping he had a wife who was a zeltron, and they had a son together. His wife was killed later because of inquisitors and he had to hide his son somewhere because he was also being looked for.

right now all we have for the son is that when he shows up he will look much older than he should, which will be a plot hook that will spur the players character into wanting to find a cure for the boy, but the player is also very fond of the idea of his character dying in some grand heroic way as a sacrifice for his son, in which case he will then play the son npc as a character, so I now also have to come up with the inter species stats lol.

As to how to do this we do already have a hybrid species example, sort of, if you look at the unofficial species menagerie we have the Arkhanian offshoot which is the result of mixing human and archanian blood. I know that the guy who made this likely never intended for it to be used as a template for what the hybrid species could look like but I like it none the less, so I’m going to do some comparisons.

Starting characteristics:

Human: all 2’s

aechanian offshoot: all 2’s

aechanian : b2,p1,I 3,c2,a2,w2

Starting xp:

H:110

AO:110

A:100

starring wound and strain:

H:10+B and 10+W

AO: 8+B and 10+W

A:10+B and 10+W

these all seem rather strait forward, the starting characteristics averaged out between the two, the hybrid gained the benefit of the higher parents xp, and I’m choosing to interpret the lower starting wounds than both parent species as being a thematic strain that is inherent to being a hybrid species, so I would apply a -2 on the wounds for hybridization.

where it really gets interesting I feel is in the special abilities.

humans have only one special ability and that is to start game play off with two free ranks in non-career skills

aechanians have two career abilities and that is to 1. Have one free rank in coerce 2. Receive free boost die when making lore checks

aechanian offshoots also have two abilities but they are different from both their parent species while still being inspired by them. First they get two free ranks just like humans, but in this case they get it in career abilities. Second they get to receive boost die but not in lore checks like the aechanians, but in brawn and agility and they have to suffer a strain for it.

so personally having gone through all of this I think I will choose when making a hybrid species to use an average of starting stats, using the higher of the two parents starting xp, apply a -2 to wounds for hybridization, and come up with new speacialty abilities that are still inspired by the parent species but not beholden to them, after all we’re playing Jurassic park with alien races here, no telling how those genes might interact.

so let’s see for my human zeltron hybrid for my players npc son(and this is also using zeltron from the species menagerie):

again characteristics are going to average out at all 2’s

staetinf xp is going to use the human 110

applying the -2 to wounds is going to leave us with 8+b and 10+b

bow the interesting part, special abilities:

zeltron gain the one free rank in charm while humans gain 2 in any skill, I am going to change this so that the hybrid can gain one free rank in any social roll: charm, coercion, cool, deception, discipline, leadership, or negotiations

zeltrons have empathy, tying it into the previous one I will give the hybrid the ability to negate a setback die for soacial rolls

zeltrons also have pheromones the hybrid will have the ability to gain a boost die when trying to perform a social roll associated with the rank that they received for free

and that’s my example of a species hybrid and how I now plan to go about making them from now on.

Edit: also of course this particular zeltron human hybrid will be aging faster than normal due to his human father being a clone.

Pick one parent to take after, use their stat line. If you want to take after other parent too, spend your starting xp on the stats.

Are there even any examples of hybrids in Star Wars? I can't think of a single example. Not surprising, as I didn't dive much into the murky, stagnant pond that is commonly known as Legacy. But usually Snowflake concepts like that end up getting some pop culture traction after decades.

2 hours ago, KungFuFerret said:

Are there even any examples of hybrids in Star Wars? I can't think of a single example. Not surprising, as I didn't dive much into the murky, stagnant pond that is commonly known as Legacy. But usually Snowflake concepts like that end up getting some pop culture traction after decades.

Yes, quite a few according to the old Wiki . Though truthfully I know very little of them as well, as they are typically one-off characters as opposed to a whole new species.

The only canonical one that comes to mind, and the most prominent one that I can think of is the Dathomirian. Which are human/zabrak hybrids.

*Edit: So yes, Asajj Ventress , if you've watched the clone wars.

On 10/11/2017 at 6:41 AM, LordBritish said:

In all honesty I would sometimes ask for a different stat line then the suggested species if it didn't suit the character. Like if I was ever to play the son of my character (A Rodian FS who is raised within a mandolorian culture, the product of a one night stand that fractured the father's eye socket and made the entire crew think he had somehow ticked their captain off! XD) then I might ask for a different statblock that better reflects his upbringing; while Tobin was a weak willed materialist thrust into a war of good and evil way beyond his smart, yet ordinary mind, his son would likely grow up as a hard willed Mandolorian first and foremost, Rodian second and likely wouldn't have a will power of just 1.

To play devil's advocate here:

Couldn't this just be done using with starting XP? I mean the Species stats are just baselines after all. One could argue that the baseline attributes are ingrained, and then genetic variation and life experiences account for any further changes/additions.

8 hours ago, KungFuFerret said:

Are there even any examples of hybrids in Star Wars? I can't think of a single example. Not surprising, as I didn't dive much into the murky, stagnant pond that is commonly known as Legacy. But usually Snowflake concepts like that end up getting some pop culture traction after decades.

There's a couple of Twi'lek human hybrid kids in The Clone Wars.

15 hours ago, Tom Cruise said:

There's a couple of Twi'lek human hybrid kids in The Clone Wars.

I'm prety sure that the clone trooper in that family is the kids' step father, not biological father.

5 hours ago, Tramp Graphics said:

I'm prety sure that the clone trooper in that family is the kids' step father, not biological father.

Yeah it's never expressly explained. The clone Trooper had only been for 2-3 years, and those kids were like 5-6? If Twi'lek children age super quick, then it's possible he is the father, otherwise the timeline doesn't sync.

I'm pretty sure it was confirmed by Filoni (or someone else on the story team) that he wasn't their biological father, but that they were still hybrids regardless. Just a different human father.

EDIT: https://twitter.com/pablohidalgo/status/703719160757383168

6 hours ago, Tom Cruise said:

I'm pretty sure it was confirmed by Filoni (or someone else on the story team) that he wasn't their biological father, but that they were still hybrids regardless. Just a different human father.

EDIT: https://twitter.com/pablohidalgo/status/703719160757383168

Neat!

8 hours ago, Tom Cruise said:

I'm pretty sure it was confirmed by Filoni (or someone else on the story team) that he wasn't their biological father, but that they were still hybrids regardless. Just a different human father.

EDIT: https://twitter.com/pablohidalgo/status/703719160757383168

Definitely interesting.

Just let them pick raw species and refluff them as desired. I think Klatooinians make much better mandalorians that the Stat block found in friends like these

If I remember correctly, in Star Wars there are barely any actual hybrid species in the same sense as a "Half-Orc" or "Half-Elf". In most cases of inter species procreation the offspring is born as the species of one of the parents. So if you take a human and a Twi'lek as a couple, and have a child then that child would be born as either a Twi'lek or a Human, but not as a hybrid.

If I recall correctly, in Legends the only interspecies relation to have produced actual hybrids was the Humans and Pureblood Sith, and that required generations of breeding which led to the Pureblood Sith as a species to die out, but their genetic lineage survives on with their human offspring. They just don't "have" enough of the Sith DNA to be able to manifest its physical traits.

The Nikto are another race that have shown to have actual hybrids when the sub-species mate but only 7% of the marines end with hybrids and those are shunned and hated for the most part and that is within one species.

Of course I could be wrong cause I've not read a good chunk of the books, just wikis and whatever I could get my hands on.

There's the colorful chick Boba Fett was hiting in in the special edition RotJ Jabba palace scene

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Rystáll_Sant

On 11/12/2017 at 10:54 AM, Wandering Terä Käsi Artist said:

If I remember correctly, in Star Wars there are barely any actual hybrid species in the same sense as a "Half-Orc" or "Half-Elf". In most cases of inter species procreation the offspring is born as the species of one of the parents. So if you take a human and a Twi'lek as a couple, and have a child then that child would be born as either a Twi'lek or a Human, but not as a hybrid.

If I recall correctly, in Legends the only interspecies relation to have produced actual hybrids was the Humans and Pureblood Sith, and that required generations of breeding which led to the Pureblood Sith as a species to die out, but their genetic lineage survives on with their human offspring. They just don't "have" enough of the Sith DNA to be able to manifest its physical traits.

The Nikto are another race that have shown to have actual hybrids when the sub-species mate but only 7% of the marines end with hybrids and those are shunned and hated for the most part and that is within one species.

Of course I could be wrong cause I've not read a good chunk of the books, just wikis and whatever I could get my hands on.

15 hours ago, EliasWindrider said:

There's the colorful chick Boba Fett was hiting in in the special edition RotJ Jabba palace scene

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Rystáll_Sant

Yep. There are a few hybrids in the canon and Legends material.

My suggestion would be to pick one of the parents species and call it a day. In a way of having one set of genes being dominant and all.

On 2017-10-12 at 2:20 PM, Darzil said:

Pick one parent to take after, use their stat line. If you want to take after other parent too, spend your starting xp on the stats.

I'd do this, and maybe let them spend xp to add special abilities from the other species, decided on a case by case basis. A nautolan/trandoshan hybrid could for instance have both claws and aquatic abilities but I doubt I'd allow extra abilities that stacked similar bonuses for instance. And the xp cost would be probably-not-worth-it high.