Damon Griffin
First Post
Looks like I screwed up here. I wanted to see if anyone else had done something similar.
When I created my current half-elf character, I noted that half-elves have the exact same racial benefits as full elves when it comes to "immunity to sleep spells and similar magical effects." My DM and I read the racial descriptions for both elves and half-elves and, lacking specific information to the contrary, decided that the business of 'trancing' rather than sleeping was probably as much a cultural/training thing as it was biological -- akin, perhaps, to those Vulcan mental disciplines we Trekkies hear so much about -- and that the immunity to sleep spells was tied to the fact that elves don't sleep.
If both these things were true, then it could also be true that half-elves, IF raised exclusively in the culture of their elven parent, could also 'trance' instead of sleep. We didn't think we were making a house rule change at the time, we thought we were just extrapolating from what was already there.
So it has been for 7 levels; Robyn the half-elven Ranger has gone into a meditative trance for 4 hours every night and has not felt a need for sleep, owing to his childhood years of training in Vulcan -- er, elven -- mental disciplines.
In our current adventure, the 'correctness' of all of this has suddenly been called into question, as we've run into something which may be a Nightmare spell...a spell which specifically says it affects half-elves but not elves.
At this point we'll probably have to house-rule that the way I've been running Robyn all this time is valid, and continue treating him that way. Now, a question: if we do so, would we have to consider him immune to the Nightmare spell, as elves are, given the logic outlined above (i.e., elves are immune to Nightmare because they do not sleep; Robyn does not sleep for the same reasons elves do not, ergo...?)
I hadn't counted on getting my character any extra benefits when he was created, but I do enjoy logical consistency, so if one thing should logically follow another, I don't want to ignore that.
When I created my current half-elf character, I noted that half-elves have the exact same racial benefits as full elves when it comes to "immunity to sleep spells and similar magical effects." My DM and I read the racial descriptions for both elves and half-elves and, lacking specific information to the contrary, decided that the business of 'trancing' rather than sleeping was probably as much a cultural/training thing as it was biological -- akin, perhaps, to those Vulcan mental disciplines we Trekkies hear so much about -- and that the immunity to sleep spells was tied to the fact that elves don't sleep.
If both these things were true, then it could also be true that half-elves, IF raised exclusively in the culture of their elven parent, could also 'trance' instead of sleep. We didn't think we were making a house rule change at the time, we thought we were just extrapolating from what was already there.
So it has been for 7 levels; Robyn the half-elven Ranger has gone into a meditative trance for 4 hours every night and has not felt a need for sleep, owing to his childhood years of training in Vulcan -- er, elven -- mental disciplines.
In our current adventure, the 'correctness' of all of this has suddenly been called into question, as we've run into something which may be a Nightmare spell...a spell which specifically says it affects half-elves but not elves.
At this point we'll probably have to house-rule that the way I've been running Robyn all this time is valid, and continue treating him that way. Now, a question: if we do so, would we have to consider him immune to the Nightmare spell, as elves are, given the logic outlined above (i.e., elves are immune to Nightmare because they do not sleep; Robyn does not sleep for the same reasons elves do not, ergo...?)
I hadn't counted on getting my character any extra benefits when he was created, but I do enjoy logical consistency, so if one thing should logically follow another, I don't want to ignore that.
