So half breeds in many settings are often times depicted as being stronger than their "more powerful" offspring.
A half demon is stronger than their full demon parent. Same goes with half angels and even half dragons in some instances while humans are often described as being weaker than any of these given entities.
So... does this mean humans are like some kind of genetic multiplier? Like if a demon has a child with a human that child has the strength of the demon x 2?
It's only by the power of writers fiat and being his own special snowflake.
Maybe it has something to do with the author being a human, but our stories do tend to be quite anthropocentric.
It may be that because humans are generally seen as the standard by which all other races are judged, having the standard race mix with the specialized race removes the weakness of the specialized race while improving the standard one. Take, for example, that Dhampirs may not necessarily have the whole unholy-strength-of-the-damned thing vampires have going for them, but they also don't have the whole burn-to-ashes-in-sunlight thing going either.
It takes inspiration from real-world hybrids. However, they are also often sterile or reduced fertility. Take the mules. Mules are more patient, hardy and long-lived than horses, and are less obstinate and more intelligent than donkeys.
In culinary terms, humans are a flavor enhancer. Boring on their own, but mix them with a dish, and suddenly the flavor of the dish pops.
Humans are the creme fraiche of fantasy settings.
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>So half breeds in many settings are often times depicted as being stronger than their "more powerful" offspring.
Which settings? I've never heard of this before.
Another thing to consider is the definition of "more powerful." If by "more powerful" you mean "can beat a pure-blooded _____", then that may just be because one has more weakness to exploit than the other.
In most settings, Humans have a far, far greater capacity for growth in short timespans than other races, hence why an elven "adult" of like 120 is just as strong as an 18 year old human. The brains are wired differently, in a way. A half breed combines the original race's inherent abilities with humanity's penchant for growth and innovation.
Take Dante himself, for instance. How many demons in the series actually use guns? It might not seem like much of a modifier when you consider Ebony and Ivory only do pisspoor damage, but Lady manages just fine using Scorpions and Kalina Ann. The demons might have overwhelming magical strength, but they're stuck in their ways and overly arrogant about their own abilities.
So basically, Humanity is fucking awesome because they have the capacity for growth, and while uninteresting mechanically, as a piece of fluff text or lore, that makes them stand above a lot of the others.
This. You take lions and tigers you get fuckhuge cats. You take brown bears and polar bears you get fuckhuge bears that are fearless. You take wolves and coyotes you get a big dog that is fearless and too clever by half. Two different types of bee produced a rolling ecological disaster. Horse and zebra give you a cooler looking horse.
This. Hybrid vigor (Heterosis) is actually quite an important factor in overcoming inbreeding depression (yes, that's the technical term). It's tightly tied with mate selection as well since the MHC is a particularly strong target of this phenomena (sidenote: female humans are able to detect differences in MHC-1 between themselves and potential mates; as greater variety in MHC leads to a wider variety of diseases protected against, MHC that differ greatly smell "nice". Also, a pregnant woman or one on birth control has it almost exactly reversed, so they smell someone with differing MHC as "smelly")
However, it is important to note that not all hybrids express improved fitness over their parents; it's selective perception when we do see it.
Earindil says hi.
ZORSES EXIST?!
As do zonkeys.
I'm not sure abut zule's. Fertile mules are pretty rare.
>A half demon is stronger than their full demon parent.
But that isn't how it goes most of the time. The half demon is only strong because their demon parent is like the most powerful demon ever or some shit.
>Earindil
Did less impressive shit than pureblood elves.
Its because they are poorly written.
>Demons, Vampires, Dragons, whatever are OP as hell
>How can I make a protagonist who can defeat them?
>I will make them half of whatever their enemies are with all of the advantages, none of the downsides, and a human spirit or willpower or whatever
You could just give them some kind of magic item to do shit. The reason why people go with hybrids is to be deliberately edgy.
FPBP
Or by being clever, determined, skilled, and just plain crazy enough to pull it off.
>Fertile mules are pretty rare
Fertile mules exist? Can you take two fertile mules and continue to breed them until you make mules a actual species?
In muh settan, all divine servants (except for the nigh - invincible Enforcers of the god of death) are all former mortals 'promoted' by a deity. This allows them to breed with mortals and explains why it's possible for mortals to defeat, say, a pit fiend- the pit fiend is 'just' a PC-tier enemy who's been at it a long time.
No male mule has ever been documented as fertile, but a few rare females have conceived children with horses.
> Those spikes coming out of its shins.
He resisted the pull of a Silmaril and willingly gave it away.
He also took down Ancalagon. That beats any pure blooded elf in the Silm.
Dewclaws.
He also fought together witht he eagles. Don't make it look like it was his doing alone.
Interestingly OP, in one of the more notable "half-vampire" hybrid examples, Vampire Hunter D, this is explicitly not the case in his setting.
While D himself seems to lack almost any weaknesses except for a mild vulnerability to sunlight that leaves him exhausted if he spends too much time in it and a thirst for blood, the vast majority of the dhampir in the novels he meets are weaker then vampires and frequently far, FAR more vulnerable to sunlight then he is, usually having at best some freakish mutation that gives them an unusual superpower which really doesn't compare to the abilities a true vampire gets.
D himself is an exception because it's been implied he was heavily experimented upon in the womb by his father in a deliberate effort to make him "superior" to regular vampires.
Angels are demons are made, not born. They are a static whole, a single unit. They have their full power available to them immediately.
Humans grow, change, adapt. They start with nothing and come into little, but they gather the scraps of experience and skill all their lives and make them theirs.
Combine the two and you get someone with potent innate power as a starting point for their growth. Of course they come to eclipse their forebears.
Because plot reasons.
Also I never got that Dante was stronger than the demons he fights. He just gets strength from his human side through the bonds he makes that drives him forward.
Meaning he was baller enough for Manwe, the local equivalent of Odin, to both notice him and say "yeah, go help that motherfucker out."
Dante got beaten by the strongest human-demon hybrid.
Huh. Never even thought about hybrid bears, I only ever heard about cattle and cats.
I thought that guy was just a human with some magical augmentation.
It's terrible. Polar bears are being driven south and are mating with grizzlies, producing a grizzly the size of a polar bear that behaves like a polar bear in that it will hunt and eat anything it pleases.
BLADE DON'T PAY NO TAXES
Nope, human transformed into a demonic body via parasite.
Hybrid vigor only occurs after much inbreeding. Otherwise race mixing generally has negative effects.
Are the half breeds stronger or is the main character who happens to be a half breed stronger?
Dante is canonically stronger than daddy Sparda, who as far as we know was considered one of the strongest, if not THE strongest demon ever (considering how he singlehandedly defeated the armies of hell/Mundus). Certainly the most accomplished one, anyway.
Demons not updating their tech is noted in a lot of descriptions in DMC1.
Most notably, regular demons with strong evasive abilities (see: bloodgoyles, and the black cape guys) are sitting ducks vs guns, because they "evolved" to fight knights with melee weapons and the occasional bow.
That said, DMC1 demons usually are pretty fucking old and haven't had much contact with the human world for the last millennia or so. Demons evolving to counter bullets after prolonged exposure is not entirely out of the question.
Fun fact. Dante is actually an exception to what you mentioned. The only reason he's so strong, is because his father was basically the strongest demon in history, and even managed to beat the shit out of Not-Satan. The only reason Dante is so much stronger than the demons he encounters in the game, is because his father was such a freakish outlier when I comes to demon power levels. He's at BEST, equally powerful as Sparda, or more likely, he's actually weaker than him, but it hardly matters if he's an 8 to Sparda's 10, when even Not-Satan is just a 7.
Usually this is because their demon dad is particularly exceptional. Dante for example is not super stronk because he's half demon, he's super stronk because he's half Sparda.
This. OP's idea is retarded.
Another example would be Elaine Belloc from Lucifer's super good comic.
Why does this nephilim seem to have more potential power than other divine beings? Because her dad is Michael and that guy is equalled only by Lucifer and topped only by God.
At first look it would seem like Inuyasha is like this.
At second look you realize that the Pureblood Sesshomaru is a lot stronger than Inuyasha ever will be. And that about 80-90% of Inuyasaha's power comes from his demon sword.
Half-breeds are 1) rare and 2) usually the protagonist. If something pops up rarely in a story, you want it to be significant when it does, and if your protagonist is something rare, you want that rare thing to be badass enough to justify all the protagonisting he's going to be doing.