Aside from crunch, did half-elves ever add anything of worth to any setting...

And where has this potential unfold itself?

I do the same thing, but if I have a player who I suspect is going to bitch about it too much, I go even further and just say none of the races are compatible with anyone except their own.

They were the offspring of rape or forbidden love, outcasts at the best, killed on sight at the worst. Most of the time they hid their condition or hated one of their halves. Tanis from Dragonlance
But then you-know-what came and they became the thriving hope of all races. Heck, they became the best diplomat type in 4e, all about "coming together despise the differences".

>But then you-know-what came

Tolkien came a fair while before Dragonlance.

>But then you-know-what came
I really don't know who you are talking about.

Just pull a liger.

Half races exist but are sterile.

Ligers aren't sterile though.

They were a metaphor for race mixing.

They worked as misfits who were torn between two worlds, but that kind of roleplaying potential is rarely capitalized on by a DM, and when it is the player usually drops the ball on it. I had a great campaign where humans and elves were at war and the half-elf was trying to stop said war, ended up with two of her cousins (one human, one elven) being in the same battle, and the human cousin dying, and her being tormented wondering about that slim chance that the elven cousin had fired the arrow that killed the human cousin. Maybe kinda dumb but I thought it was good. Also they have never added anything good crunch-wise, they are shit in pretty much every system so they rarely get played. I mean they were just abominable in 3.5 unless you were going for a diplomancer build at the expense of everything else and just needed that final +2. Half-elves should have been +2 Cha -2 Con, a garbage stat array but still good for those who want to play bards or sorcs.

That doesn't stop anybody from playing them.

>ligers
>in nature

Like how you're a metaphor for a fucking idiot.

It would have been a long time ago, but there is evidence based on local legends of eurasian ligers in nature. They obviously dont occur much anymore, due to the fact that only females are fertile and the two species dont share habitats anymore, but when they did there very well might have been crossbreeding

I’m all with OP on this topic.
And I love elves!
Therefore I dislike the existence of half-elves.
(I don’t mind playing one from a player’s perspective, but there shouldn’t be any in better setting in the first place.)

>fired the arrow
STOP

Eberron implies humans are an experiment of eldritch horrors that loved to play legos with live flesh. They were designed to breed with everything.

Elves were eladrin slaves of primordial giants who degenerated and can breed with other races due to the tampering from the giants.

Half-orcs don't necessarily have to be half-human. Orc blood with another race always makes a half-orc because there's something about orcish nature that's nearly incorruptible.

>shit in pretty much every system
>probably the single best race in 5e, barring cheese with Variant Human

Make them sterile but better in some detail than their fathers. Nobody likes barren children in an era when inheritance and dynasties is the alpha and omega of everything.

>most broken race in 4e

Yup, shit anywhere.

...

Because dwarves are often a different species from humanity in the literal sense: they are less closely related to humans than chimps are.

I agree with OP. Half-elves and most half-humans races should be removed. Elves on the other hand should be a middle-ground between mortals and fey. Instead of humans with pointy ears they should be more alien, magical and weird.

Half elves are yet one more way in which Elven society and culture can be seen as fading away or diminishing. Not only are they being encroached upon by rapidly expanding and developing human nations, but they're being bred out of the gene pool and out competed on the most fundamental level. For a people as in touch with nature as elves, the darwinism present will not be lost on them.

Elven hard liners will use the half-elves as an example of the dangers humans pose as a threat to their bloodline and heritage, and will radicalize more and more the less "pure" elves remain.

Moderates will use the half-elves as examples of how assimilation and coexistence are possible, which furthers the schism.

The current fear among many conservatives about the white race basically going extinct, multiculturalism and globalism invading the west, and minorities out breeding native populsations and becoming the new majority and basis of culture? It's exactly like that. Go browse /pol/ for five minutes but replace every mention of "Nigger" with "Human" and "Jew" with "Dwarf" and pretend it's a bastion of Elven hardliners disgusted at the dwindling of their race.

Apply that to the elf-human relationship and it's no wonder there's tensions around Half-elves.

TL;DR:do it like the scoiatel and half-elves are like in Witcher

I don't see any reason why elves supposedly are the same species.

And why are there no half-dwarves, who are also a fading race in many settings?

There are no half elves in Tolkien. Elves who fall in love with a human have the option to become of the race of men, they don't stay elves or make half elves.

Shit, I was wrong. Half elves have the option to be man or elf. They get to decide, the partners stay human/elf. The child has to pick one, though. So, either way still no half elves in Tolkien.

Human dicks can't penetrate steel, thus they can't fuck the anvil's that dwarves seem to propagate from.

Because afaik tolkien didn't have any half-dwarves and that's where most modern fantasy settings get their idea of half-elves from. Then once D&D got super popular it didn't have any half dwarves either, so now settings that borrow from it lack them too.

It's also, I imagine, because the difference between dwarves and humans is more quantitative than qualitative. "Elves have magic, are immortal, with pointy ears" can be made into "Half-elves have an affinity for magic, are long lived, and have slightly pointed ears".

"Dwarves are long-lived, bearded, short, with an affinity for mining" well shit, there's already people with one or more of those traits. What's a half-dwarf then? "Somewhat long-lived, semi-bearded, somewhat below average height, likes money"?

Oh and in some settings dwarven women have beards, and since it's normally human male/elf female that doesn't exactly work as well since heterosexual men as a rule generally aren't into facial hair on girls, let alone enough to propagate an entire species

They rarely interbreed. And in most settings aren't dwarves just variant humans like halflings and hobbits were?

>"Somewhat long-lived, semi-bearded, somewhat below average height, likes money"?

So, half dwarves are Jews.

They both have an affinity for golems, too

Checked. In Tolkien dwarves were made from a different god entirely, while elves/humans came from the same god, but were gifted differently. Maybe that's why. I think.

You are probably just about right with the first point, that's the entire meta reason. But for the sake of it.
>What's a half-dwarf then?
Stockier, broader human with greater strength and constitution, resistence to poison and magic. Maybe even a bit of dark vision.
>Oh and in some settings dwarven women have beards, and since it's normally human male/elf female that doesn't exactly work as well since heterosexual men as a rule generally aren't into facial hair on girls, let alone enough to propagate an entire species
Well, not all of them have beards, some people are into shortstacks and you forget that male dwarves might take human women. I'll anticipate "why would they find them attractive?", to which I would respond: "the same reason a female elf would find a human male attractive. It actually doesn't make much sense, but the author says so."

>They rarely interbreed
This is basically a "depends on the setting", like in warhammer fantasy there is much more contact between dwarves and humans than with elves. Currently I'm reading a novel in which I never heard of any elves, but dwarves exist.

>Elves on the other hand should be a middle-ground between mortals and fey
No, dumbass, they should be celestials.

>It's fantasy anyway, why should elves be genetically compatible with humans in the first place?
Try rereading this sentence.

I guess half elves exist because elves are hot and humans want to have babies with them. The dream is that you'd somehow be able to woo a hot elf chick and she'd be all pretty, then it would be sad and dramatic when you realize the human'll die soon

Dwarves are too ugly and short for humans to want to fuck and too proud to want to fuck non-dwarves.

Orcs don't -need- consent, so half orcs are common enough. I think most of the propagation of these types just comes from the decision to have half-whatevers in the rulebooks as core races, for indecisive and boring people. They want to be special but dont want to be -too- special so they roll a half-elf.

Half orcs are popular because people want to play orcs, but orcs are always the bad guys. So you get a bit of a compromise.

Doesn't really count for elves. Humans are normal and elves are great.
It'd work for half orcs, maybe.

I think they're fine middle of the road with going vanilla with Human but not wanting to be a full-on mystical tree-fucker as an Elf.

Making Elves into /pol/ is actually really in-character for them

The Bretons in the Elder Scrolls were a pretty cool concept and add a decent amount to the setting.

Tolkien says that elves and humans can't breed except in very significant circumstances. It has to basically be ordained by Illuvitar himself.

>did half-elves ever add anything of worth to any setting?

In David Weber's War God series pure elves were immortals created by magic and couldn't reproduce among themselves. A race of long lived half-eves known as "The Purple Lords" ran a few countries.

A lot more traits than just that would be required. Tell me if I missed any:
>Possess a crude sense of humor that would disgust most humans, revolving around either bodily emissions or insults towards a targets masculinity. Basically the stuff an adolescent boy would come up with to the laughter of his ribald peers and spammed ad-infinitum.
>The hard liners consist almost entirely of males who will openly lust after other races. If it's elven male on the female of some other race then it's a sexual conquest to be bragged about. If it's a elven female on the male of some other race then it's disgusting blood pollution. The hypocrisy goes unnoticed by them.
>Consisting mostly of the dregs of elven society, failures and know nothing know it alls who are content to blame their lack of success on a dwarven conspiracy. Each of them believes themselves to be the pinnacle of the elven race despite most elves being more successful than them despite the conspiracy.
>Despite imagining the dwarves as being omniscient octopuses that are behind everything bad that has happened to elven-kind no matter how much of a stretch it is, they also think themselves superior to dwarves.
>Disgusted by modernity in all forms. If they had their way then elven society would be sent back so far both technologically and socially that elven society would become irrelevant to the world.
>Despite proclaiming themselves to be the protectors of elven-kind, the first casualties that they have planned out after their takeover is most of the elves themselves.

I like to think of elves in fantasy settings as tempted/fallen divinity. They're the very first spiritual beings to permanently descend into material reality, all they have left is their arrogance from when they were something greater or they cling to the false concept that being the first earthlings is somehow "good", because at least they're more beautiful/perfect/representative of true creation than their peers, but a far cry from actual true creation itself. Falling is a HUGE thing with elves, with dark elves, eldar whatever. They are the subtly disgraced and it is so subtle that they do not even realize it, whereas at least humans and orcs and shit know they're fucked and get with the game.

You know, actually Spock is a good example. Vulcans and humans didn't hate each other, but their mentality was VERY different.

I think this is why half-elves don't work, usually. Elves are just calmer and more refined humans. Not really something to go on about intrapersonal conflict.

>i realize this shit comes from JRRT but the conflict wasn't because of the half-elves, just for interracial and interclass romance, basically Beren was an illegal immigrant and Luthien the 1%

Tanis in Dragonlance had to struggle with being a half breed, not accepted by the elves or humans. I've played a half elf and I expect that sort of conflict among the races.

Humans and Vulcans did interbreed, though. Even Spock was half human.

That's... my point. The did interbreed and the problem was the progeny; in JRRT's works the problem weren't the half-elves but their parent's romance.

1) should work with DND half-elves, but usually elves nowdays are really similar to humans, so there is no great conflict.

Lol no they are not buy okay.

Tolkien's dwarves were really weird. No defined gender roles, apparently dwarves spring forth fully formed sans beard, and you couldn't tell a male from a female. Arguably Tolkien's dwarves didn't have genders.

They are pretty central to the plot of Errant Story

...

half-elves are just another race, one among many
they dont really need to add some kind "thing" to the setting, they just help the player add more options and allow for more groups and organizations for the players to interact with

Dont bump if no puttinhg stuff in thread

Fucking this.

It eliminates waifus and cross-breeding fetishes, which are fucking cancerous.

Severely under-rated post.