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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mhacdebhandia" data-source="post: 3015549" data-attributes="member: 18832">In some ways, I think that the "traditional" half-blooded races are unnecessary and uninteresting, while some of the more exotic innovations of Third Edition, especially those inspired by the beginnings provided by Planescape, are much more intriguing.Half-fiends and half-celestials (as well as aasimar and tieflings) interest me a lot more. What they imply about the relationship between mortal races and the inhabitants of the Outer Planes, not just on the level of "some of them are having sex" but on the level of the amount of contact and intertwined interests and destinies is very fertile ground for worldbuilding and for campaign arcs.Half-elves and half-orcs, though? Half-elves are only mildly interesting when they borrow from the half-orc's "angsty child of A Certain Unfortunate Incident" schtick, like Tanis in the Dragonlance novels, and that's annoying a) in itself, and b) because it relies upon casting humans in the role of brutish, horrendous aggressor and further glorifying the over-glorified elves.Like many things in core D&D that I don't care for at all, Eberron does a lot to redeem half-elves and half-orcs for me. The idea of half-elves as a largely self-sustaining, true-breeding race with its own identity (and a few dragonmarked houses) to its name eliminates the need to justify the choice of race with some kind of backstory explaining how an elf and a human fell in love (or at least had children), and the parallel development of the half-elf "Khoravar" race and urban civilisation on Khorvaire explains and reinforces the "diplomatic cultural chameleon" schtick that Wizards of the Coast tried to give half-elves in Third Edition.Likewise, the fact that the largest population of half-orcs in the world is found among the mixed orc and human clans and tribes of the Shadow Marches culture gives that race a real place in the world, without the need for mealy-mouthed angsting over how they came to be. The simplicity of the idea that half-orcs are a natural product of a culture where orcs and humans like each other, respect each other, and get along in the same community is very attractive.Basically I guess my point is that if you use half-blooded races, it should be because you want there to be some significant degree of contact between the two parent races. If you neglect this, all you're left with is a seemingly-disproportionate number of extraordinary love stories or terrible assaults. Sometimes that's great fodder for characterisation in the hands of a thoughtful roleplayer, but it's so much better to have a real place in the world for everything you use - or to not use it at all.</blockquote>

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