CrimsonCarcharodon
Explorer
[FONT="]While pondering my Spelljammer setting I've been working on, I decided to ditch half-orcs entirely, to be replaced with full-blooded orcs, and I'm very, very tempted to do the same for half-elves. Granted, I'm using half-orc racial stats, because they're better than orc racial stats, but that's not the point.[/FONT]
[FONT="]See, I don't get half-elves. Rather, I don't get the fascination with having half-elves and half-orcs be a thing, but half-dwarves or half-gnomes aren't. Or that half-anything races are necessarily half-human.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Half-elves and half-orcs are described often as anomalies or one-offs. That they're all searching for their place in society, or their parents don't accept them, or blah blah blah. Yeah, it worked for Dragonlance back in the 80s, but that was thirty years ago. Now it's not only cliche, but boring. Not to mention, half-orcs are portrayed a lot of the time as products of horrible assaults.[/FONT]
[FONT="]I'm pondering ditching half-elves completely for my games with one exception: Eberron. And that's because Khoravar (their name for half-elves) are a true breeding race separate from humans and elves, and even have their own dragonmark that only manifests on half-elves. They were given a real place in the world and, to my mind, are more elf-blooded than half-elves.[/FONT]
[FONT="]So do we really need half-elves? I feel like a player that wants to play a half-elf could easily enough play either an elf or a human, whichever half is more dominant for their character. So aside from thirty-plus years of tradition, are they worth keeping around?[/FONT]
[FONT="]See, I don't get half-elves. Rather, I don't get the fascination with having half-elves and half-orcs be a thing, but half-dwarves or half-gnomes aren't. Or that half-anything races are necessarily half-human.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Half-elves and half-orcs are described often as anomalies or one-offs. That they're all searching for their place in society, or their parents don't accept them, or blah blah blah. Yeah, it worked for Dragonlance back in the 80s, but that was thirty years ago. Now it's not only cliche, but boring. Not to mention, half-orcs are portrayed a lot of the time as products of horrible assaults.[/FONT]
[FONT="]I'm pondering ditching half-elves completely for my games with one exception: Eberron. And that's because Khoravar (their name for half-elves) are a true breeding race separate from humans and elves, and even have their own dragonmark that only manifests on half-elves. They were given a real place in the world and, to my mind, are more elf-blooded than half-elves.[/FONT]
[FONT="]So do we really need half-elves? I feel like a player that wants to play a half-elf could easily enough play either an elf or a human, whichever half is more dominant for their character. So aside from thirty-plus years of tradition, are they worth keeping around?[/FONT]
