FireLance
Legend
Well, this is from the Dragonshards article Half-elves of Khorvaire (in the Eberron Campaign Setting), off the WotC website:
Sounds like a good enough system to me.
Human + Half-Elf = ?
- Thread starter MissCalculation
- Start date
taliesin15
First Post
Numenoreans? (re: human+half-elf=?)
This thread came back to me this weekend watching Fellowship of the Ring on TNT. I thought it might be of some relevance for folks wondering what to do in their campaigns to reconsider Tolkien. In the scene where Elrond urges Isildur to cast the One Ring into the fires of Mount Doom I realized: both are half-elves.
Some half-elves essentially lived like Elves (Elrond was one of the few half-elves I know of who passed into the West). Elven blood in men, I believe, was represented in the literature as "the blood of Numenor". There's all that stuff about the blood of Numenor being diminished in men--which meant men like Aragorn, who had old elvish blood, but much diluted, had a life span of something like 300-400 years, whereas more pure blood Numenorean kings I think lived more like 1000 years.
This thread came back to me this weekend watching Fellowship of the Ring on TNT. I thought it might be of some relevance for folks wondering what to do in their campaigns to reconsider Tolkien. In the scene where Elrond urges Isildur to cast the One Ring into the fires of Mount Doom I realized: both are half-elves.
Some half-elves essentially lived like Elves (Elrond was one of the few half-elves I know of who passed into the West). Elven blood in men, I believe, was represented in the literature as "the blood of Numenor". There's all that stuff about the blood of Numenor being diminished in men--which meant men like Aragorn, who had old elvish blood, but much diluted, had a life span of something like 300-400 years, whereas more pure blood Numenorean kings I think lived more like 1000 years.
Lord Morte
First Post
taliesin15 said:
IIRC half-elves are given a choice: live as men or as elves. Elrond chose elf, his brother chose man, and Arwen also chose man and hence gets to stay in Middle-Earth. The half-elves who choose elf aren't really that different from normal elves, exhibit A: Elrond.
I agree that the child of a half-elf and a human would have a 50% chance between being functional human or functional half-elven, but I do feel that the functional human should get something nifty from the bargain to represent the few elven traits buried amongst all that mundane human-ness, such as with the Numenorean kings. I'd say the easiest way to represent this would be a feat, such as the Orc Blooded one in Dragon 315.
Adam Radenheimer
First Post
roll a d4 1 is an elf, 2 and 3 are half elves, and 4 is a human
Just Human.
John R Davis
Hero
If it is really important to the campaign then just discuss and pick.
Vaalingrade
Legend
Serious answer: Half-Elf.
Fun answer: Drow
Fun answer: Drow
CleverNickName
Limit Break Dancing
I'd let the player choose which parent their character favors the most, and use the stats for their choice.
If the player says "My mother was a half-elf and my father was a human, but I take after my dad," they'd use the stats for Human. They can call themselves whatever they like, but mechanically they'd be human.
If the player says "My mother was a half-elf and my father was a human, but I take after my dad," they'd use the stats for Human. They can call themselves whatever they like, but mechanically they'd be human.
LuisCarlos17f
Legend
3/4 human + 1/4 elf = human with "elftouched" racial feat.
3/4 elf + 1/4 human = elf with option of "humantouched" racial feats and flaws.
3/4 elf + 1/4 human = elf with option of "humantouched" racial feats and flaws.
Kichwas
Half-breed, still living despite WotC racism
This is basically asking about blood quantum's. While in the real world that is an extremely toxic subject... in a tRPG... I'd still avoid it.
Just keep the 'half-X' as the individual is a person of mixed heritage.
In PF2E at least this is ultra simple: It just means you can pick ancestry feats from any of your ancestries. Blood Quantum is a moot point because that's mostly a culture topic, and well, Blood Quantum is still moot as even people with a slight bit of heritage from a source can carry a gene recessively for generations until it pops out in a child somewhere. The most dramatic real world example of this being that people even today pop out now and then with traits that comes from their Neandertal ancestry...
In another other game, I'd still just stick with having the new character described as 'half' or 'mixed' or whatever term that system uses, and drawing for the ancestry mechanics that system used for a mixed / versatile heritage.
Above all, avoid going down the Blood Quantum path of "so many drops of blood from X makes you an X or a Y"... because it leads to unpleasant places and lines of thinking.
GMMichael
Guide of Modos
So does thread necromancy.
Kichwas
Half-breed, still living despite WotC racism
I see. There were posts only a few days back. Didn't see that the thread itself started years back.
