Human Bane vs. Half-elves and Half-Orcs

skelso · Apr 13, 2008

My players will soon be facing a villain with a Human-Bane weapon. There is one human and two half-elves in the party. I'm just posting to verify that Human Bane does not work against half-elves. Is that correct?

The Monster Manual does not contain stat blocks for humans, half-elves or half-orcs, which would be the usual way I would try to determine whether Bane affects a particular creature. Under the description for half-elves and half-orcs, they have the Elf Blood and Orc Blood entries that seem to indicate that for all intents and purposes, these guys are just elves and orcs, respectively, and therefore the Human Bane effect on the weapon will not work on someone unless they are fully human. Am I reading this correctly?

psionotic · Apr 13, 2008

I assume that's the rules intentions, and that human bane weapons do not work against them. This makes sense in a certain respect, because otherwise 'half' races would be subject to two different kinds of race-based bane weapons, and hurt by them twice as often.

Someone I suppose could house rule this if they wanted, and make half-races half as susceptible to both kinds of bane weapons, instead of the all or nothing. So a half-elf would take 1d6 from human bane and elf bane weapons, instead of 2d6 from elf bane only...

frankthedm · Apr 13, 2008

This is WHY the the racial write ups have Elf blood and Orc Blood as abilities.

moritheil · Apr 13, 2008

skelso said:
I'm just posting to verify that Human Bane does not work against half-elves . . . they have the Elf Blood and Orc Blood entries that seem to indicate that for all intents and purposes, these guys are just elves and orcs, respectively

Yes.