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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(Psi)SeveredHead" data-source="post: 2959952" data-attributes="member: 1165">Half-elves have a long history. They show up in a lot of books, even Tolkien's (where they're very different). One of the best known DnD characters, Tanis, is a half-elf. I don't know about half-orcs; they were here in 1e, which I've never played, and I've never seen them in a book except as a "better" orc and always as a villain. (And by better orc, I mean just that. Nothing about the social implications, except maybe not being treated as well. They're never treated as a race.) Even in Eberron, they had to shoe-horn them in.I have read a trilogy where one character is half-halfling and half-elf. Sure, they fall in love, but I would think it would take lust to actually produce the offspring.I think part of it has to do with "beauty". I can't really picture a male human being attracted to a female dwarf the way they're presented in most settings, and I presume the same goes for female humans. (Deverry is the only exception I've seen.) Same goes for humans (we're all human, right?) with orcs. Stereotyped behavior would make cross-breeding less common. Elves just seem too arrogant to want to have a relationship of any kind with a human (elven PCs are far less arrogant than fictional elves), and orcs are so brutish (the stereotpye, that is) I can hardly picture a relationship between a female human and a male orc that didn't involve spousal abuse.I would not expect small races to mate with medium races - mechanics aside, I simply cannot picture that being far removed from ... pedophilia. (Not trying to stir up trouble here, but I just can't see the positives.)Halfling-gnome matings would have been pointless before Eberron came out; before then, gnomes were a comic race, not something to be taken seriously. Gah, now I'm thinking of kender-tinker gnome crossbreeds. My brain is hurting!Humans and dwarves have crossed in Dark Sun (fairly frequently) and FR. In the DS setting they're common enough that they're basically they're own race. They're called muls because they're sterile. (They can make love, just not have offspring.) Muls make great gladiators and slaves (poor guys) because of their strength, endurance, and even their lack of intelligence. (Keeps down the slave revolts.) They're not that common, and it's kind of implied that most were created as a result of business transactions which may amount to rape. At least one mul child was conceived through love in the Prism Pentad series, but I have to say if that kid got squashed I would celebrate. No seven year old kid is that smart or competent, especially with a racial Int penalty. I got the impression that love between humans and dwarves is pretty rare on Dark Sun, even if the two races were able to find each other largely attractive.FR had a half-dwarf who was killed in the "Fall of Myth Drannor" supplement. I know little about him, and don't know what caused the union. Maybe they talked about him in some other book I don't have.I think adding more crossbreeds just annoys DMs. Making a new balanced race isn't easy, plus a lot of crossbreeds seem to involve rape or other situations the DM would rather leave out of their campaign.</blockquote>

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