Half-elves: What's the problem?

[Atticus_of_Amber]

OK, I don't think that it's that unbalancing, but I'm also not a big fan of the ''balance'' fetish that seems to have overtaken the game.

*shrug*


It strikes me as reasonable and justifiable, considering the flavor that you're trying to impart; it helps to liven up an otherwise OK but bland PC race, giving it something unique that raises the crunchiness ratio a bit.


As for the feat, I'm not certain if I get your full meaning; this bit --



-- has me kinda scratching my head, but it could be it's because it's late and I should be long abed by now.

As always, examples make things clearer.

We have a human Ftr7/Brb2/Rog1, lets call him Dorin. Dorin sufferes no multiclass penalites because: (a) his favoured class is "any" and thus his highest level class, fighter, doesn't count and (b) his other class levels are within one level of each other.

Dorin wants to take another level of Barbarian but doing so would mean that his rogue and barbarian levels would be more than one level apart and thus he would suffer the 20% xp penalty.

But Doring is lucky enough to be in my campaign! He thought ahead and took the feat, Additional Favoured Enemy (Barbarian). Thus his highest leveled class and his barbarian levels don't count towrds his cp penalty and thus he suffers no penalty.

However if Dorin, being a tad dense, had instead taken Addtional Favoured Enemy (Fighter), he would be in trouble. He'd get to ignore his fighter levels, but he would have been able to ignore them anyway becasue his racial favoured class is "any' and figheter is his highest class level. His rogue and barbarian levels will count towards calculating his xp penalty - since they are more than one level apart, he gets teh 20% penalty. Poor Dorin.

Of course, if Dorin had chosen to be a half-elf, and my house rule applied, he wouldn't have had to worry about all this. In fact, as a half elf, he could have been a Brb1/Drd3/Ftr5/Rgr7/Rog9 and still not collected an exp penalty. Silly Dorin.

 

[Kilmore]

I don't know the exact thing we do off the top of my head, but we have a rule where the hald-elf, being adaptable, can start taking a cross-class skill as a class skill every now and then.

 

[Scarbonac]

As always, examples make things clearer.

[snipped example for brevity].

OK, I think I get it now...actually being awake helps, too...

Kilmore: Hmm, that doesn't sound too bad, either; that's another helpful idea to pitch to my DM and to adopt for my own games. Schweet!

 

[L0rd_Dark0n]

To reflect that exotic breeding, what about giving the Half Elf +2 to any attribute -2 to any attribute? Or +2 to CHA and -2 to your choice. Would that be too much?

 

[Scarbonac]

To reflect that exotic breeding, what about giving the Half Elf +2 to any attribute -2 to any attribute? Or +2 to CHA and -2 to your choice. Would that be too much?

It might be just a tich too much.


To be honest, I still don't get why, in 3e, +1 modifiers to ability scores are so verboten...or is that just another example of ''balance''? Personally, I'd be happy to give half-elves +1 DEX, -1 CON, for example, to more accurately reflect their elven heritage.

*shrug*

 

[Umbran]

To be honest, I still don't get why, in 3e, +1 modifiers to ability scores are so verboten...or is that just another example of ''balance''?

For the same reason that -2 to "your choice" is a bad idea. It allows players too great an ability to maximize the benefit, but minimize the detriment. With even ability score mods, you guarantee a change in the resulting stat bonus or penalty. The player will always feel both the good and the bad side of it.

 

[haiiro]

I find both the half-elf and the half-orc to be underpowered in 3e.

There is no real non-RP reason to play a half-elf, as you get more bang for your buck from both elf and human. If you consider only their RP potential, I think they're just fine.

Half-orcs don't really represent their human half very well, and are fairly dull from a mechanical standpoint. From an RP perspective, they can certainly be an interesting challenge -- but as anything other than a fighter or barbarian things will be stacked against you from the get-go.

The problem with tweaking both races is that they're tricky to modify without making them too powerful. Giving the half-elf back another of the human options (feat or skill points) overpowers them, and giving them more elf options takes them too far in that direction. With half-orcs, there's very little to work with -- they only get two real abilities (STR boost and darkvision), and both are excellent. On top of that, whether or not +2 STR/-4 elsewhere is a balanced shift is a hotly debated topic.

I've wrestled with making adjustments to both races in the House Rules forum, but never resolved either of them to my satisfaction.

 

[CrusaderX]

I've often toyed with the idea of house ruling half-eleves so that they have favoured class "all" - that is, they never suffer xp penalties no matter how many classes they take.

I like this idea becasue it fits with the "jack of all trades"/"between worlds" nature of half-elves and, by profviding an incentive for multiclassing and making the race attractive, it would provide an in-game explanation for the common cultural "fact" in many campaigns that a disproportionate number of half-eleves are adventurers.

What do people think?

I like that. I like that alot.

 

[Davelozzi]

Regarding Gnome, I think this is a specific problem around me. We are living in Japan. And skipped most of AD&D things. Many old players were playing red and blue boxes D&D. So we do not know much information or stories regarding D&D gnomes. So just by reading core rules, we can't catch what is the "taste" of gnome. They look like something between halfling and dwarves. But that is all and we can't be interested in that "new" small race. Again, I guess this is the only problem around me.

It's not just you guys in Japan, the gnomes have always been sort of without a niche as far as many people (myself included) are concerned.

The only thing that you apparently missed was the whole tinker gnome thing which started in Dragonlance but has been sort of ported over to gnomes in general. In Dragonlance, they love to tinker (basically fix things, invent machines, etc). except that the end-product usually doesn't work very well, or works in a comical, roundabout way.
In other worlds, the comic factor is downplayed and it's more like the gnomes are just industrious inventors. For example, in the Forgotten Realms , gnomes are the makers of firearms, having learned how to do so from the god Gond during the Time of Troubles.

Also, gnomes have traditionally been the best illusionists. Apparently in the revision they still have some illusion-related abilities but the favored class has been switched to bard. More on that and other things gnomish in this thread: http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=51569.

 

[Wippit Guud]

But then if you decide to do it for the role-playing reasons, you need to come up with something interesting that is both different to Tanis and has a reason for being half-elf.

I'm in two (soon to be 3) PBEM games.

The first game,among the others, has two characters: a human paladin, and an elven bard. They're roleplaying a werig relationship (considering the paladin, in character, knows nothing about women).

In the second campaign, the lady who plays the bard, took a half-elven cleric... the daughter of the paladin and the elf.

Makes for some interesting backstory.