Bretons are by far the most interesting race to me. They are really versatile. The only thing that's been stopping me from using them is their height. I'm 6' 4", so I want my characters to be as tall, or taller than me. Bretons are short though, so is it OK for them to be tall? I can use a height adjuster and first person camera adjuster for Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim.

P.S. Does anyone know the max height on Bretons in ESO? If I were to max out the slider for height, would they at least be as tall as a default Nord?

The tallest Bretons in ESO are slightly taller than the shortest Nords or Altmer.

I'd say it's always okay for an individual to be exceptionally tall or short for their race as long as it isn't a common occurence. In a universe where belief shapes reality, it might even signify something... Or not. If you need an explanation, you could always pull a Nord ancestor out of your sleeve, but I don't think it's necessary.

I was already thinking my character had a scholar Nord for a father, and a Breton for a mother of the same profession. Tired of living an academic life, he left home a while ago. With his cleverness and overall intelligence, he could become one with nature without too much difficulty, and take some odd jobs here and there and solve them with stealth.

So basically a tall, intelligent(given since it's a Breton) thief/assassin.

The Breton's are a weird, culturally sporadic people whose lineage is all across the board. Basically any kingdom in High Rock that was likely under the rule of the Nordic Empire and has a fair bit of Nord ingrained in them could be taller then some of their other counterparts elsewhere. Same goes for Breton's who have more Aldmeri features, et cetera et cetera.

So basically, yeah, Breton's could be pretty tall.

Good. So on top of them being intelligent, I don't have to worry about my tall Bretons being non lore friendly.

It would be quite nice if in the next TES game, one could sort of make a "mixed race" character with some sort of slider that would also impact race passives/powers, in addition to a "cultural" thing for certain upbringings (Colovian, Nibenese, etc. for Imperial).

I'm sure there could be tall Bretons and short Nords in lore. Queen Barenziah's husband was said to be tall for a Dunmer, possibly due to Nordic blood. So since Bretons have Nordic and Aldmeri ancestry in their blood, I can picture a tall Breton.

Once upon a time, Bretons were known as a "tall, dark-haired race." This was in Arena, mind you.

Unlikely, since race as a gameplay concepts gets chucked out the window in a nano-second. As is, you can pretty much achieve the desired effect in a CC menu that has a decent enough amount of customization to it.

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/images/384836/?

Can Bretons be tall?
Do bears [censored] in the woods?

Not to mention the Nord ancestor would be very confused. How big of a sleeve are we talking here, anyway?

Also, OP, if your character eats a hearty breakfast each day and does some jumping jacks they can one day be tall. May I recommend lots of milk?

That always struck me as somewhat strange. They're a magical hybrid of the 2 'biggest' races, and yet the only people shorter than them are Bosmer? I just assumed it had to do with poor posture and the stooping of the filthy, malnourished peasantry.

Let me guess, you also find Nords stupid.

Or if you ask Alinor Altmer, becoming weaker and weaker thorough racial intermingling is the culprit. Breton's are also suppose to age pretty poorly IIRC, when compared to the Nords and Ra'Ga.

I just think they did it going off of older models to fit in with the "Breton's are wizards" trope that really doesn't hold water if you actually examine High Rock closely. Its kind of hard to examine nuances and differentiation in bloodlines and cultures across many different sections of High Rock within a game that doesn't cater to it. We can't even seemingly Nibenese/Colovian representation, and that's as stark a contrast as you can get.

There is a part in Brief History of the Empire that talks about Cassynder Septim, who is part elven and part human. It says, "When Cassynder assumed the throne upon the death of his mother, he was already middle-aged. Only half Elven, he aged like a Breton."

I didn't take this to mean that Bretons age poorly compared to other men, but rather that he aged like a human instead of like a Dunmer.

As to height, I think mingling and proliferation decreases it. There are relatively few Altmer compared to the other races, and they are the tallest. They have the most 'stuff' in them. Skyrim is very populous, but compare the height of Nords to the height of their cousins, the giants. The Nords have shrunk through proliferation. The more you divide, the smaller the piece of soul pie you get.

Bretons and Imperials are both of mixed descent, and I think they are basically the same people aside from their culture. The Ayleids and Direnni were physiologically the same, after all, both groups being High Elves.

*sigh* minor soliloquy/rant to follow . . . Next time Bethesda is going to launch a ~15 year long multi-million dollar fantasy role play gaming series based loosely on Earth medieval history they really should hire some anthropologists to consult about things like "what is a 'race' versus a 'species' or an 'ethnicity'" and "why do the mean statures for some populations differ from others," etc. . . . Every time I hear the different groups in TES referred to as "races" it just makes me cringe and realize that the 25 years of my life spent studying human variation, and the cumulative thousands of years that anthropologists have spent in general, have had effectively zero effect on popular understandings of human or more broadly biological variation . . . *end soliloquy/rant*

I don't think that they should wait for their next 15 year fantasy franchise, they should do it here and now. At the very least, it would give them strong cultural frameworks to build future games off of and clear identities for the races... Hell, no one's paying me to do what i went to school for right now anyway, I'd even do it for free...

That said, TES follows some very different rules, and has some very different influences, that make a flat application of biological anthropological standards impossible. Species, as typically defined in biology, just doesn't fit in TES, and forcing it to diminishes the setting they have established, one where humanoid reptiles can interbreed with Humans. Race means it's own thing in TES, and while it started out as a representation of an often too-used and outdated concept derived from largely superficial real-world classifications, it's become it's own thing entirely, and within the context of TES's natural laws, it works.

True. For TES "race" just means "type."

But then using the word "race" carries with it all the false premises it carries in the real world. Consider, would anyone ever say "Can Spaniards be tall?" or "Can Filipino's be tall?" Perhaps some would be silly enough to ask "Can Native Americans NOT be alcoholics?" or "Can Gringos have soul?" and with that I hope everyone can appreciate why the use of the term "race" makes me cringe . . .

Oh, definately. And it's rather unfortunate that, for gameplay reasons, Race keeps getting denoted as a relatively one dimensional thing (and, in fact, many people around here support the idea of making races more specific, right down to having innate talents and personalities) even when it's not really represented in the lore.

It's somewhat unfortunate a combination of culturally weighted and missused language, RPG tropes and in-universe stereotypes have resulted in many people viewing those same stereotypes as hard and fast rules that they must abide by.

Bretons are a race of mutts with ancestry from almost every single corner of Tamriel.

So yes, they can be tall due to their possible Altmeri/Nordic/Orcish genes.