Half Elves: Player Races in 5e Dungeons & Dragons - Web DM

One place I see where half elves ought to show up more than they do is as royalty. Drawing from medieval political marraiges or the desire to marry people of equal social status, the elite nobility in human and elven kingdoms should intermarry quite frequently. I could see human kingdoms where the princes and dukes are almost uniformly half elves.

"Half-elves are sort of being lackluster" Maybe since 3.x came along, sure.  Step back before then and they were easily in the top five most played races, and maybe the top three.  Racial class level limits made them golden, and their racial abilities were far from shabby.

Half-drow is absurdly synergistic with Hexblade and allows for the best crit-fishing build in the game. I do like build synergy, but when I have a 60% chance to crit for 10d8 damage on top of three attacks with Great Weapon Master, and half-drow is enabling that build to work, it's definitely way stronger than all the other half-elf variants.

I had a half elf character that I haven't been able to play who was a prince that was born as part of a peace treaty between the Human and elven kingdoms. He has the whole "inheritor of both worlds" thing going on. And even though he's sorta exiled he tries to live up to what is expected of him, being as good a person as possible.
But he's only half Human.......

I made a character way back in City of Heroes MMORPG. Gold skin, white eyes, white long hair, pointed ears. His story was that he was a half-gold elf that found himself on Earth. Magic origin, earth controller/empath(master at locking down mobs, with great healing).

His medieval fantasy story is that he grew up as an expert duelist, preferring medium armor, but was not that good with bows(crossbows he's good with, just never had much luck with bows). He later gained natural power of nigh-divine healing, and a command of earthen and natural ground elements(earth, magma, etc.). And grew up along side a baby gold dragon that couldn't speak, but developed a telepathic bond with him.

I have no idea what class to pick for him in D&D 5E.

If a half-elf's parents are themselves two half-elves, how many human halves do the two half-elves themselves have to have had?

I kinda blended the go between and outcast by going for a half-elven psionic. My character is accepted but hides his abilities fearing becoming the outcast after fighting to be accepted.

I remember going to tribe. Use to be friendly and welcoming. It was nice while it lasted.

Half-elves are one of my favorite races, both for the roleplaying possibilities they offer, and their stats. I've always felt a connection to races that are outcasts, and while I love tieflings, I think I overall prefer half elves, as the exploration of simultaneously being from two completely different worlds, yet a part of neither is very interesting to me. Plus, they make amazing Paladins because of that +2 to Charisma, which is also good because if you make Charisma your dump stat with the classic numbers, it means you have no negative stats, also making them good for min-maxing.

I am thinking about testing a half elf bard from the school of satire and you guys gave me this idea about the jesters being the half elves, that are permited to duel in every place of the society despite the lack of money or status, thanks

Elves are different breed than human... so even they can have sex with human but no offspring will come out of it... BUT they just join in when human have sex with their mate... that's why they can claim human offspring as belong to them also... that's why you need to pray to God asking his permission to have sex with your wives...so the Elves cannot join in invisibly with you when you have sex...

Humans tend to view looking good as good! Thus half-elf are born! Elves are support to be beautiful and graceful so humans take them all as good!

Half elf and half orc.

Half races are mules in my game.

Counselor Deanna Troi is a Star Trek Half-Elf

So I'm about to have my first go at tabletop D&D. The others quickly had their race & class, chosen. They came up with very creative gnome characters. Considering I was stuck I chose something to balance to the party. - SO I'M A BIT WORRIED - I have no experience. WHAT HAVE I GOTTEN MYSELF INTO - I'm a half elf Paladin who's a bit dumb, lacks the ability to do his own hair, & no stranger to being filthy & this is in my backstory. I know nothing of how to play, I feel I may have bitten off a lot more then I can chew. Oh well.

I think the idea of half-elves being lackluster in earlier editions is a bit overexaggerated at times. In 3e for instance, their immunity to sleep, enchantment resistance, darkvision and partial elf skill affinity combined with not having a penalty to constitution makes them good candidates for characters that want both the elf bonuses and a better HP score. And they are strong competitors to humans in any character that isn't feat starved.

In 2e, they really are just terrible elves, but have access to a number of classes the regular elf doesn't and naturally outclasses any human that isn't dual-classing if they're of the same class. Assuming the human didn't roll absurdly good stats compared to the half-elf, of course. I'm not familiar with 1e or 4e though.

I would say that half-elves in 2nd and 3rd edition were less niche and more useful overall than standard human is now when compared to the other options at the time. Of course, I really like how the half-elves are worked out in 5e.

Just finished my half elf shadow magic sorcerer, and I am in love with her. She is a proper shadow realm nerd, so each time the party meets a beast or something dark happens, her eyes glisten and she starts fangirling. Otherwise she is normally very blunt and reserved, which makes it extra fun when she gets her episodes ahahaha.

Just started learning about D&D and one of my friends want to do a home brew campaign or at least that’s what he called it. And I think I want to do a half elf but I wanna know about them by a lot before I chose to pick it as a character race so this helped quite a lot!

In the homebrew setting im playing in, there is a kingdom where elves and humans co-exist where the ruling dynasty and nobles are all Half Elves. Who better to intermediate? Plus they have the perk of being longer lived.
When we met a visitor from this land, herself a half elven princess, my elf was chagrined to be totally disregarded by her in favor of the Half Elf. She was baffled that the Half Elf wasn't just automatically in charge.

I just started playing d and d after a 30 year hiatus. Is a half elf monk a bad Leda for a character build? Am I wasting my time?

When Jim kissed and winked, I subbed. 😆

There was a D&D game where the party ended up in this town that was a the main trading town for the region. One person (not a 1/2 Elf but had Elven ancestry) fell in love with a Elf woman who ran one of the shops there. Things seemed to be going well until he started talking about his family. That is when they realized that the Elf woman was his great grandmother (or was it great great grandmother?).... She had a falling out with her daughter who left town to marry some human the next couple of towns over... Darn Elves & their long life spans!

I like the idea of a half-elf barbarian playing against type.

Elrond Half-elven.

My player wanted to be a half elf of Aasimar and Moon elf descent...

I’ve watched your videos for a long time. Rarely comment though. But I just wanna say that I really appreciate your content and view points. You’ve helped me understand a lot, and I’m finally getting around to DMing (hard to find a group). I’m watching this to help my Girlfriend make her character. I’ve gotten great inspirational questions from your discussions to ask new players when they are coming up with ideas...

I could go on but it may turn in to a rant - so I’ll just end on saying thank you guys so much for what you do!

I am sort of bothered that Elves have +2 on Dex and Half-Elves on Charisma without anything like that existing for elves. But I justify it as Elves being better at stuff like that and Half-Elves impressing by both ethereal beauty and human determination.

"WHATS WITH ALL THE HALF-ELVES?" Jerry Seinfeld

I'm trying to decide between a half elf of some kind and a verdan for my first char. Are less common mixes annoying to most groups?

It's been a while since I've played. But my all time favorite character was a half-elf ranger/rogue .

I am relatively new to the world of dungeons and dragons but I’m just curious, is there a way to have a half dwarf half elf if there is, what sort of advantages and or disadvantages would 1/2?

The whole thing with elves using fast growing half-elves as emergency troops is so sinister but so cool. Elves see a danger coming in about 20-25 years, so they throw a bunch of parties...

Half drow would definitely be forced, they love sLaVeRy

Honestly, I kind of want to play a half elf arcane trickster based off of Loki. Mischievous and charming on the surface, but insecure and lonely on the inside.

I've always sorta wondered about the whole "outcast who doesn't fit in" thing, because it seems to me half-elves would just start hanging out with each other and form their own families and communities. After all, they would relate to each other better than with either elves or humans.

As for how they are conceived, what if elves find humans just as attractive as humans find them? Maybe not strictly physically, but they might consider humans to be very endearing, stimulating and amusing. Perhaps humans just tend to be more passionate than elves, resulting in shorter but more intense relationships?

I could sorta see that being appealing to a very long-lived race who can still be affected by ennui. Maybe elves sometimes get very bored and restless, and a simple solution is to go fall madly in love with a human for a couple of decades?

Okay, against type... half-elf necromancer

High elf fighter

My off type halfelf is a full of himself boasting fighter who's likely to start the bar fights.

Four years later, this video is still useful! After a six month break, my playgroup is getting back together so my half elf Bard is rejoining the yawning portal.

They talk about half elves only becoming viable in 5e but I had to run one in 2nd Ed back in the nineties because of that editions archaic race restrictions on classes.

Back when barbarians and monks weren't in the base game, all paladins were of the lawful human type and there was no such thing as dwarven wizards I wanted to play a druid. But in 2nd Ed you could only play half elf or human druids. I played that guy from first level to 17th and I'm pretty sure from 12th level on you couldn't progress in druid levels without defeating the respective member of your circle and taking their place.

What a crazy game it used to be.

guess what's not going to be around anymore?

I got 2 Half-Elven Rangers.

Half Drow

Get your Riddick on

And the excuse to use the lines

Riddick:
"You're not afraid of the Dark,
Are you...? The Light hurts my eyes."

Or

Bane:
"Oh... you think Darkness is your
Ally... but you merely adopted the Darkness... I was born in it! Molded by it... I didn't see the Light, until I was already a man... & it was nothing more to me than BLINDING!

"The shadows betray you...
Because they belong to...
To ME."

Nice. With this Woke-oTC is only Half-nuts.

🤧😎😰🦣