Why is there so much hate?

[Humanaut]

IME, when i DM'd 1e/2e nobody wanted to be human, everyone wanted a race with Infravison to see in the dark. So if you didn't want a stat adjustment, the popular race was 1/2 elf... "humans with infravision" you might say. Heck, i even house ruled that humans got +10% xp AND +1 to ANY one stat... they got a little more play, but the 1/2 elf usually won out. BTW, it was rare for our games to get into the uber-high levels that would make the level caps for certain races that the old edition had be relevant.

Now.... I have yet to see anyone even think about 1/2 elf in my 3.5 game. Humans with the skill points and bonus feat have made them more poplular than before.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Hatred is a bit strong of a word, but I don't include them in my games. Why not? Because I've yet to see one played with even a modicum of attention to their racial heritage. I've never seen one played as anything but a fully-fleshed human but with the advantages of elven heritage. Hlafling PC's are played according to a halfling cultural frame of reference. Elves and dwarves too. But with Half-Elves there's never any roleplaying acknowledgement of their only partial elven heritage, or the inherent difficulties of never quite fitting in either a human or elven society, even if they are blindly accepted by other PC's.

I just think that accepting Half-Elf as your race means you should be accepting a certain level of roleplaying obligation regarding your mixed heritage because that IS the cultural reference that they have.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

This is what "Aragorn" has come to? One could weep.

I'm hardly a Middle Earth scholar but unless I've misunderstood...

Aragorn had elven blood but could hardly be considered half elven, particularly not by the "rules" of Tolkiens Middle Earth as he did not have the option to choose between his elven and human heritages - i.e., choose mortality or immortality.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Half-Elf makes a fine Bard, and fits well for certain styles of Rogue or Druid. You get Elfiness Lite, without the hit to Con -- a very big deal if you are playing a d6 or d4 hit point class.

Low-Light vision is pretty valuable IMO.

IMO the Half-Elf is to the Core races, as the Paladin and Monk are to the Core classes. It is not necessarily too weak, as too inflexible in its benefits as to spark the imagination and endear option to most players.

 

[Plane Sailing]

This is what "Aragorn" has come to? One could weep.

Surely you mean 'this is what Elrond has come to'?

Elrond was half-elven.

Aragorn was of the line of Numenor - skilled and long lived, but still men.

 

[Awakened]

You may be misinturpreting some of the hate.
I hate them because they should be rare, elves and humans are differernt enough that they would rarely voluntarily produce childeren. I mean would you be able to marry and settle down with someone who you knew was going to die before you reached 35? I also dislike rapes being common enough to spawn and entire race.

Wait, what is this about rape?
I always figured the majority of half-elves come from willing sexual partners. Half-orcs? yeah, probably a rape. Half-elves? A human with pointy-ear fever.

 

[DungeonMaester]

...Because old players miss Gishing?

I had always thought elves and half elves in first ed. had better flavor with there sword and spell then the gray flavor they have in 3rd, as compared to Drow who got a make over and look cool despite 'if any' drow hate.

---Rusty

 

[UltimaGabe]

Has anyone house-ruled in anything to make half-elves cooler?

I have- I've house-ruled them to either have the stats of a human or an elf, player's choice. Much cooler IMO.

 

[Jhaelen]

Has anyone house-ruled in anything to make half-elves cooler?

In my campaign elves are fey (they get the half-fey template) and are forbidden as a player race. Half-elves are available as a player race and get the standard elven racial traits instead of the half-elf ones. Problem solved

 

[Arkhandus]

I hate them because they should be rare, elves and humans are differernt enough that they would rarely voluntarily produce childeren. I mean would you be able to marry and settle down with someone who you knew was going to die before you reached 35? I also dislike rapes being common enough to spawn and entire race.

Bah. Elves and humans in D&D are enough alike to find one another attractive and companionable. There's no reason they couldn't have children together like normal couples. And love doesn't exactly differentiate between 'pointy-eared or not so pointy-eared'.

Sure the human partner would die off in a matter of decades, but they are assured that if they follow the same deity (or same alignment i.e. behaviors, which a married couple usually would unless it's a really rocky marriage), they'll end up in the same place when they die.

And people don't always act very wisely when they're in love, or think they're in love; there's enough evidence in the real world of that. The elven partner may be forlorn for part of its long life, but will either remarry (if not unacceptable in elven society, which depends on the campaign setting probably) or just cheer up since elves are less morose and less obsessed with mortality than humans are, so they wouldn't despair too much over the dead. They'll meet them again eventually in the afterlife, and elves can wait.


Half-orcs are more a matter of what orcs are like in the campaign setting.....not all settings have orcs as fugly pig-men that are universally despicable. And at least half-orcs aren't nearly as repulsive, so they're more likely to produce offspring with one another (or orcs or humans) than orcs and humans together; a few half-orcs could spawn a half-orcish bloodline, and in enough generations with enough mixing of other bloodlines, it could perhaps become a significant portion of a tribe or collection of tribes, or whatever.

The Sovereign Dominion of Eyros has less-ugly orcs, and half-orcs as an important aspect of the orc and human nobility, since only half-orcs can rise to the throne of the Grand Monarch.....