Why Half-Elves???

[Tewligan]

My ex-GF wasn't much taller than Lidda is supposed to be and she was neither a child when I went out with her, nor did she look like a child.

According to the PHB, halflings are about 3 feet tall. Who were you dating, Vern Troyer?

 

[Olive]

One thing that no one mentions is that, playing strictly by the rules, half-elven rangers can choose human as their favoured enemy without being evil. And that's pretty useful.

 

[Felon]

A new player asked me recently, why someone would want to play a half-elf, unless he REALLY wanted to do it for the ROLE-Playing, and for the life of me, I couldn't think of any reason. What do you guys think?

OK, gather close, folks--I wanna tell you all a secret....You aren't really supposed to be playing half-elves anymore!

There was a point to them back in previous editions where non-humans (or demi-humans as they were called) had a hard cap on what classes they could take and how high they could progress in levels, but in 3e they are in fact quite obsolete. Now they're still included in the D&D 3e PHB as a form of backwards compatability, but they're intentionally designed to be unappealing enough that players will lose interest in them until they can officially be dropped altogether as a legacy of previous editions. They'll become yet another topic for those "hey, do you remember when D&D had...." conversations.

But darn it, some folks won't be sensible and write them off. They see some sort of wasted potential and so they insist that WotC should fix'em up--even though a whole lot of these folks don't have a flippin' idea exactly that should be accomplished (they haven't thought the matter through, but doggoned if that doesn't stop them from being peevish about it). It is kind of an unreasonable position since what we're talking about is a hybrid from two races that are readily available for play in the PHB. How can it offer anything with unique appeal without essentially making it something other than a half-elf?

I have DM's who keep trying to hammer every unpopular class, race, skill, feat, and spell into somethng "balanced" and thus, by their reasoning, appealing to players. Guess what? For the most part it's a grand waste of their time. Just because nobody plays a half-elf or a bard or what have you, that's not necessarily a problem. If your game suffers for it, then some tweaking is called for. But if the game seems to play out fine with no half-elves or bards, then what's the big deal?

 

[Bran Blackbyrd]

According to the PHB, halflings are about 3 feet tall. Who were you dating, Vern Troyer?

LOL.
Nah, but she spent a good deal of time as a gymnast, which has a little to do with it. She would be taller than Lidda. No doubt she'd have enjoyed having someone smaller than her around.

One thing that no one mentions is that, playing strictly by the rules, half-elven rangers can choose human as their favoured enemy without being evil. And that's pretty useful.

Hmm. Very interesting. I don't think it would have occurred to me. I'm pretty devious IMO, but sometimes stuff slips by the radar.

 

[Thels]

The weird thing is that a Half-Elf also is a Half-Human. But how much of that do return in the character abilities:

- Preferred Class: Highest
- Ability Modifiers: None

The 1st probably doesn't even get noted in most cases. It has no use at all for singleclass characters and multiclass characters where both classes level at the same speed.

The 2nd gets noted even less. Humans are pretty dull with no ability modifiers.

As for bonuses, it's obvious that the Elf has far better bonusses than the Half-Elf. The 2 influences from it's Human parent aren't bonuses, just traits (The preferred class is not always a bonus. For example, an Elf Fgt3/Rog3/Wiz1 endures no XP penalties, while a Half-Elf Fgt3/Rog3/Wiz1 does).

How minor these 2 Human influences are to the Half-Elf, the Half-Orc has even less. No Human traits at all. The Orc however is not a playable race, so the comparison with Orc abilities are made far less, but they're still lacking. In a campaign where Orcs are permitted, the Half-Orcs would suffer as much as the Half-Elves.

What would be nice is a heritage system. Each common race should have racial features and heritage features. The heritage features would be about half the racial features. Then when 2 races mix up, the child receives the heritage features of both parents. For example:

Human heritage abilities:
- No ability modifiers
- +1 skillpoint per level (4 at level 1)
- Preferred Class: Highest

Elven heritage abilities:
- +1 Dex, -1 Con
- +1 save against enchantments
- Lowlight Vision
- +1 Listen, Search, Spot

Then when you want to play a Half-Elf, you just ask permission from your DM and if he allows it, you take the heritage abilities from Human and Elf and apply both. If neither of the parents are Human, the DM picks the Preferred Class of one of the parents as the Preferred Class for the child.

You would just have to make one heritage ability set per race, and you get the abilities for numerous crossbreeds, which stops the problem of almost all crossbreeds having a human parent. Of course the DM still has saying over which crossbreeds do or don't exist, but if they do exist, the stats are there.

 

[Hikaru]

One thing that no one mentions is that, playing strictly by the rules, half-elven rangers can choose human as their favoured enemy without being evil. And that's pretty useful.

Sure, but, unless you feel like multiclassing (much less interesting with the new ranger), why not playing an elf? Even better: a wood elf, or a wild elf.

 

[AnimalMother]

speaking as a person who's bi-racial (caucasian, native canadian) why not half-elves. or do you people have objections with half-breeds?

 

[Pseudonym]

speaking as a person who's bi-racial (caucasian, native canadian) why not half-elves. or do you people have objections with half-breeds?

Congratulations! You've just won the "Reading Way Too Much Into A Post" Award.

 

[Aitch Eye]

What would be nice is a heritage system. Each common race should have racial features and heritage features. The heritage features would be about half the racial features. Then when 2 races mix up, the child receives the heritage features of both parents. For example:

Morrus put something like this together (with help from RangerWickett) for creating characters with mixed heritages. It's in the first issue of Asgard.

 

[Aitch Eye]

What would be nice is a heritage system. Each common race should have racial features and heritage features. The heritage features would be about half the racial features. Then when 2 races mix up, the child receives the heritage features of both parents. For example:

Morrus put something like this together (with help from RangerWickett) for creating characters with mixed heritages. It's in the first issue of Asgard.