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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Particle_Man" data-source="post: 4360995" data-attributes="member: 892">Yikes!  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f631.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":eek:" title="Eek!    :eek:"  data-smilie="9"data-shortname=":eek:" /> I only read the original trilogy and the Twins trilogy so I guess I missed that one.  If it was in the original trilogy I *really* missed it, but it was a long time ago.However, the fact that it shocked me indicates to me at least that I wasn't expecting a half-elf child to be a product of rape.  It can happen, as humans rape other humans and a child can result, and I guess the authors were going for that to add pathos to the character (those awful humans!).  But I wouldn't expect it to be the norm of human-elf pairings.  Most of the elf stories I read either have the elves be so different that breeding with humans simply isn't possible, or has it be a result of desire on both sides (although sometimes adultery is involved, a variation on the "changeling" theme).The only "loving parents" version of a human and orc producing a half-orc I have encountered was the parody in Order of the Stick, which was funny precisely because it was not the expected norm.  Even Grunts, the 2nd most sympathetic account of Orcs I have read, has them portrayed as rapists.  Only Orkworld, the most sympathetic account I have read, goes for the "doomed noble savage" archtype instead.  And that was John Wick deliberately trying to redefine the orc.So while I am shocked at Tanis's being a child of rape, I would still maintain that the expectation of a human-orc pairing would be rape (The orc as rapist, and the human as rape victim), and that half-orcs thus have an unsavory past that might put people off, in a way that they wouldn't be put off playing a Dragonborn (the "good guy strong guys").A half-elf does not have to carry (and I think would not be presumed by most players, new or old, to carry) the connotations of child of rape, any more than a human child has to be a product of rape.  Thus one can play a half-elf without worrying about rape in the near (or even distant) past if one doesn't want to.The one common theme about half-elves is that they tend to be rare (why else would Tanis be called Tanis Half-elven, unless that was a rare thing to be?).  Since the Unearthed Arcana for 1st ed AD&D (whereupon half-elves no longer monopolized the cleric-magic-user (or cleric-fighter-magic-user) multi-class niche), the makers of the 4 editions of D&D have thoughtfully accomodated the rarity of half-elves by making half-elves mechanically inferior to all other core racial options. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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