Actually, both Elrond and Arwen were half-elves. This means that they can live eternally with the elves, or choose a mortal life with humans. Elrond obviously chose the elves, and I won't give away what Arwen chooses. (though I feel weird not wanting to give out spoilers on a fifty year-old book)
Another d20M rule for 3e Revised
- Thread starter buzz
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buzz said:
This would be a great argument if we were talking about Star Trek...
IMC, I'm generally not concerned whether the genetic heritage of the fantasy races is "internally consistent."This is a fantasy game, after all. If it's good enough for Tolkien et al., it's good enough for me.
Fantasy doesn't have to conform with modern science, and serious sci-fi can make one or two exceptions (usually allowing faster-than-light travel, sometimes introducing psionics or something similar). It does have to avoid breaking the rules in big, obvious ways, unless the author wants to give the impression that they didn't really think about the choices made in world-building. In fantasy you can have a system for breaking the rules, and call it magic, psionics, the Force, or the One Power, but D&D doesn't posit that elves are inherently magical creatures, so they don't get to break the rules just because they're elves.
If it were serious sci-fi (which Star Trek isn't -- and even there, some later Next Generation episodes established that most of the intelligent races in our part of the galaxy are the result of another long-gone species' genetic engineering, so the hordes of half-alien characters isn't quite as silly), standard D&D elves and humans would be considered the same species (it's only tradition that keeps us from calling dogs and wolves the same species); all D&D elves can produce fertile offspring with all humans.
buzz said:The trance thing is a simple way to make D&D elves something more than short hippies with low-light vision.
The no-sleep thing is silly, and hardly simple; it introduces tons of contrivances that really shouldn't be necessary.
Elves don't sleep, okay, whatever. If you want to deal with a mixed-race party where some PCs never sleep, while others do, and all the logical consequences of that, fine. But the 3e authors didn't do that, recognizing that most PCs will be human unless there are significant mechanical advantages for being something else, and wanted the core races to be balanced, so they nuked most of the consequences of not sleeping with the meditation-trance thing, leaving just enough to annoy anyone who wants to ambush the PCs in their sleep, send a PC a message in a dream, or even say 'you all slept for the night'.
for one of my characters, the way he trances is that he is able to slip straight into dreaming(rem sleep(?)) during which his eyes are open but his pupils close tight enough to block out light.
as he is less then full 'elven' though he can still 'sleep' as normal and is not immune to such spell effects.
as he is less then full 'elven' though he can still 'sleep' as normal and is not immune to such spell effects.
WizarDru
Adventurer
maddman75 said:
Well, I knew that Elrond and his brother were "half-elves", but I assumed that wasn't so much a genetic thing than a literary convention (wasn't Elrond know as 'the Half-Elven'?). Was Elrond's wife human? Was his mother or father? Were those humans Numenorean? They weren't quite human the way that, say, Boromir was. Come to think of it, neither was Aragorn...who was closer to the D&D version of half-elven, perhaps.
Zerovoid
First Post
Why is this elven meditation thing always such a big problem for people? It doesn't really seem very complex to me. The rules say that elves kind of block out the world while they are in the trance, so it is essentially the same as sleeping.
So, humans sleep for 8 hours, and evles do something that is basically the same as sleep for 4 hours. Assuming 12 hours of downtime, with the party divided into 3 watches of 4 hours each, the elf can take two watches. Its kind of useful, but not too exciting. Is there something else meaningful about the elven trance, besides the descriptive aspects of it, that you think should be included in the game?
So, humans sleep for 8 hours, and evles do something that is basically the same as sleep for 4 hours. Assuming 12 hours of downtime, with the party divided into 3 watches of 4 hours each, the elf can take two watches. Its kind of useful, but not too exciting. Is there something else meaningful about the elven trance, besides the descriptive aspects of it, that you think should be included in the game?
barsoomcore
Unattainable Ideal
Elrond is descended from Beren the man and Luthien the elf. Yes, Elves and Men can breed in Middle-Earth.WizarDru said:
Numenoreans are the mortal descendants of that same pairing (Beren and Luthien). Gondor is the last remnant of the kingdom of Numenor, and in fact Boromir is descended from Numenorean stock. As is Aragorn.
Tolkien doesn't really have "half-elves" in the sense of people who have some characteristics of both races. You're either an elf or a human -- it's just that some folk get to choose. The Numenoreans, however, were very long-lived -- and even Aragorn lives to a ripe old age -- 200 or something, I believe. He's something like 80 years old at the time the hobbits first encounter him.
Kweezil
Caffeinated Reprobate
For the life of me, I can't remember where I found this info. I remember reading information about how elves dream while awake, and this is why they are somewhat flighty and ephemeral compared to other races. They really aren't living in the same world as everyone else, or even each other. I guess this really does make them short hippies with lowlight vision 
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ColonelHardisson
What? Me Worry?
WizarDru said:
Elrond's father was Earendil, an Adan (albeit a very special one), his mother was Elwing (whose father was Beren, an Adan - again, a very special one - and whose mother was Luthien - half-Maia/half Eldar). His wife was Celebrian, the daughter of Galadriel and Celeborn.
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