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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aldarc" data-source="post: 9413893" data-attributes="member: 5142">I doubt it. There seems to be some back-pedaling and spin-doctoring about the half-race options by Jeremy Crawford, plus Eberron has been their second most popular setting after Forgotten Realms over a decade.It's a bit complicated because Tolkien's world-building was messy, redactive, and not as ground-up and unified as people here often advocate for. He did not originally intend for the Hobbit and later the Lord of the Rings to be part of his "elf epic" the Silmarillion. Retconning was involved. In an older draft of the Silmarillion, Elrond was the mortal son of Eärendel who stayed in the Beleriand and ruled over the remaining elves. Then later Elrond was rewritten to become the founder and first mortal king of Numenor. When telling the story of the Hobbit, he used the name Elrond for a character at Rivendell. He was very likely not meant to be the same Elrond as in his "elf epic" story, as while he is "half-elven" he may have been mortal.[spoiler]"[Elrond] was an elf-friend — one of those people whose fathers came into the strange stories before the beginning of History, the wars of the evil goblins and the elves and the first men in the North. In those days of our tale there were still some people who had both elves and heroes of the North for ancestors, and Elrond the master of the house was their chief. He was as noble and as fair in face as an elf-lord, as strong as a warrior, as wise as a wizard, as venerable as a king of dwarves, and as kind as summer.”[/spoiler]Elrond is described as fair as an elf-lord, which implies that he isn't one, in a list including wizards, dwarf kings, and summer. Elrond being described as an "elf-friend" would also be unusual for an elf, as we see it mostly used for non-elves. Bilbo and Gimli are both described as elf-friends in LotR. Elendil's name (kinda) means "elf-friend." Aragorn is also an elf-friend. And the language here in the Hobbit seems to imply that people descended from elves and humans were more common.But when Tolkien began synthesizing the world of the Hobbit and the Silmarillion while writing Lord of the Rings, Elrond became an elf due to story reasons. Now he had to change things around in his older "elf epic." So the Elrond of old got split into two characters: Elros and Elrond. They were still both born from Eärendil (changed spelling), but all "half-elves" now had to choose the fate of elves or the fate of humans. Elros chose to become mortal and founded Numenor. Aragorn (and the royal line of Elendil) descend from Elros. Elrond chose to become an elf. (Given how Tolkien views humans as having a special fate over elves, I kind of think that this makes Elros wiser than Elrond.) The choice also extends to elven children of Elrond, and we know that Arwen chose humanity. We don't know what his sons Elladan and Elrohir chose, though we do know that they stayed in Middle-Earth into the Fourth Age.I have said elsewhere that I think of D&D half-elves not so much as Tolkien's "Gotta choose: are you man or are you a muppet?" Instead, they seem better suited for characters like Aragorn, who are counted among the mortal "race of men," but who exude a majesty of the Numenoreans and Elves and blessed with long-lives, wisdom, and stature. So I prefer my half-elves less like Elrond Half-Elven in LotR but, instead, more like Elrond the Half-Elven in The Hobbit, Elros Half-Elven, the Numenoreans, and the Dunedain.I was okay with that because it also made them the Sorcerer race and later a choice for the Warlord race, the latter of which works remarkably well with my own sense of half-elves as Numenoreans/Dunedain.See Eberron. The Khoravar carry themselves with pride (if not arrogance) because they believe that two important prophetic half-elf figures 2000 years ago received a vision from two of the gods of the Sovereign Host that they were "the true children of Khorvaire," as they originate from two different species from two different continents who mass-migrated to Khorvaire. The supermajority of Khoravar in Eberron were born from two Khoravar parents, and that has been true for 2000 years. Also, half-elves of House Lyrandar are the unofficial civic administrators of Valenar, since the Tairnadal elves find such things boring and beneath them. Not a sad half-elf story in sight.</blockquote>

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