Hybrid Overkill Avoidance: Difference between revisions
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** The ''[[Old World of Darkness]]'' has similar rules to the above to prevent gratuitous crossover:
*** Only humans have avatars, so only humans can Awaken to become Mages. Becoming undead of any kind gets rid of the avatar, nixing that option. Shapeshifters were born as shapeshifters, even if they resemble humans or animals at birth, so they lack avatars. When they die they can't go to the same afterlife as human dead, so they can't become wraiths, zombies, or [[Kindred of the East]].
*** One exception is a [[Vampire: The Masquerade|vampire]]-[[Werewolf: The Apocalypse|werewolf]] hybrid "abomination," extremely tricky but possible. Werevolves are violently allergic to vampire blood so if you try to 'embrace' one, he gets a roll to see if he died peacefully or in horrible pain. Unless they're out of all Willpower, they get to die automatically. A hybrid is created only if you [[Critical Failure|botch]] that roll. A hybrid does have access to all the powers but has to watch the [[Karma Meter]] very carefully - from spiritual point of view, werewolves and vampires are pretty much opposites (one being a nature spirit that just happens to have flesh while the other is a dead shell with barely any spiritual presence) so straining too far will be detrimental to all spirit-related powers. This can be used offensively (and werewolves destroy vampires in combat bad enough this isn't your worst option), but may only be [[Taking You with Me]].
*** Several other Changing-Breeds either can't be embraced, or can't stay that way for long afterwards. Kitsune were-foxes explode in fire if embraced as kind of a [[Take That]] to players' obsession with making abominations. [[Ravens and Crows|Corax were-ravens?]] They explode come dawn no matter WHERE they are. [[Dragons Are Dinosaurs|Mokolé were-dinosaurs?]] They go BALLISTIC the second the embrace starts, and their war form? A dragon/dinosaur which may very well breathe fire and/or glow with sunlight. ''Then'' they die. Rokea were-sharks? No vampire has been dumb enough to try it (they also are mostly aquatic, making it hard for vampires to even know they EXIST, much less find and capture one). Bastet werecats can be embraced but immediately start losing their Gnosis stat, which cripples their supernatural abilities.
*** Also averted by the infamous [[Canon Sue|Canon]] [[Villain Sue]] Samuel Haight who was a ghoul-werewolf-true mage. Until he died, became a ghost, and was soulforged into an ashtray.
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** Only living things can become undead, so no [[Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot]] (flesh golems are constructs, not undead).
** Constructs cannot breed, and thus cannot be half-dragons or any other inherited type.
** Undead are immune to disease, and thus cannot become lycanthropes. You ''can'' make an undead from a lycanthrope, but it tends to be pretty pointless since they revert to their human form upon death and none of the bonuses they get from being an untransformed lycanthrope are maintained by the transformation into typical undead. The result is just a human.
** Undead flesh may not retain all the natural abilities it had in life, and skeletons have no flesh at all.
** Lycanthropes and vampires can only convert humanoids, not animals, constructs, [[Eldritch Abomination|abberations]], [[The Fair Folk|fey]] or any variety of dragon (draconic or mind flayer vampires use a different template).
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*** It is therefore possible to create a vampire werewolf, but only if you apply the templates in the right order.
** Dragons, celestials, and fiends can breed with just about anything, but only if it's living, and the results of such breeding may not convert well into useful undead.
*** Only one crossbreed half-dragons is known to have occurred in [[Eberron]], and she considered an abomination worth destroying her entire bloodline over. Half-dragon as a template is applied exclusively to fiends "blessed" by Tiamat.
** It is possible to graft construct parts onto a living creature, but the result becomes a construct and thus no longer counts as living, which restricts the ability to apply other templates, and they do not breed true, if they can breed at all.
*** This makes possible the [[Game Breaker|Half-black-dragon, half-iron-golem troll]], which is immune to damn near everything, but would require a black dragon (acid-breathing) to breed with a troll (vulnerable only to fire and acid), and the offspring to be converted to a half-golem at great difficulty and expense, probably against its will. Neither the victim nor its parents are likely to be pleased. Also the trollbane item makes what it's applied to bypasses regeneration regardless of damage type.
** For player characters, the main mitigator is Level Adjustment, a virtual inflation of the character's effective level imposed by most beneficial templates. For example, a half-dragon has an effective level adjustment of +3. Thus a 1st level half-dragon character is theoretically as powerful as a 4th level character, and as such not legally playable in a group starting out at any level below 4th (and s/he would start out at only 1st level in one that was). The level adjustments of all templates on a character are additive. Only a max of +1 or +2 level adjustment is ever practical (since this can be removed entirely at high levels) and the sources of level adjustment are worth the level adjustment can be counted on your fingers.
* ''[[Exalted]]'' has rules to prevent most forms of supernatural mix-and-match. Not only were most non-human races genocided in the Primordial War, but all mortal races have distinctly different souls. Exaltation only works on humans. The main non-human races, [[Dinosaurs Are Dragons|Dragon Kings]] and Mountain Folk, reincarnate upon death, so they can't become ghosts either. On the other hand, ''Exalted'' has a remarkably lax definition of "human," so most Wyld Mutants and half-animal Beastmen count and can exalt. God-blooded (people with one human parent and one parent who's a god, elemental, demon, fae, exalt, or ghost) are likewise human enough to exalt, but half-exalts become normal exalted with no special traits, and the other kinds gain new powers painfully slowly after exalting.
== Video Games ==
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