Usually the children of a half-elf and a pure-blooded elf ( such as Tanis and Laurana ) are considered elves, although they may show some variation in height, skin and eye colouration, etc. That whole deal about any human ancestry, no matter how remote, making one a half-elf, was IIRC a 2E Complete Book of Elves ruling that never made a lot of sense, anyway. In the 3E Forgotten Realms setting, it is explicitly stated that such children are true elves, and I had thought that the same applied to Dragonlance. As an example, when Qualinesti was founded there were half-elves among the settlers, who must have bred back into the general elven population - you don't have a considerable chunk of that nation's population being half-elves simply because of remote human ancestry. In my campaign I'll be treating Gilthas as a more or less normal Qualinesti elf, but I'm wondering what other people think about this. And does anyone know whether his racial entry in the DLCS was simply an error?In the novels Gilthas was always describe as a Qualinesti elf with some tainted human blood in him.
Ah, yes, the Qualinesti attitude towards "tainted human blood". Its ironic given that one of the main reasons the Qualinesti split to form their own nation was because they ( in the time of the Kinslayer Wars ) accepted half-elves as full members of the elven people. And a lot of Qualinesti have ancestral human blood, for the same reason. Now they're almost as prejudiced as the Silvanesti in that regard.
Gilthas most likely doesn't consider himself a half-elf, mind you. This is purely a game mechanics issue.
Cheers,
Cam
I have to agree with Cam here in regards to Gilthas. While he is 3/4-elven, he did have a very pronounced human chin, and he displayed some human qualities off an on. Enough so that his fellow kinsmen were able to recognize this.
Tanis is donating:
Human --- Elf(T)
And Laurana is donating:
Elf1 ---- Elf2
So there children have the possibilities of being:
Human/Elf1
Human/Elf2
Elf(T)/Elf1
Elf(T)/Elf2
If I am remembering how to do this correctly (i think this is Malthusian Genetics????????????), then there is a 50% chance of a full elf or a half elf from a Tanis/Laurana pairing. Again, if I remembered correctly. I couldn't find the worksheet on green and yellow peas in my old notebooks.
now I know this works for eye color and stuff, but maybe not for racial characteristics. However, if the above doesn't work, how about this:
Tanis has the following genetic characteristics
D/R =
A/a
B/b
C/c
D/d
E/e
Laurana has
D/R =
a/t
B/X
G/D
Y/u
c/K
Laurana's genes obviously represent someone with full elf traits. So if these were the dominate genes in a child, then that would be a full elf, becuase that is what they express.
So if enough dominate and recevive traits combine together you'll get an elf, but if not you get a half elf. Technically speaking, if Laurana had any human history or the genetics worked wierd (from mutation or just shared things like limbs and you have head hair) you could actually get a near full human with this sort of pairing.
So could some biologist clean this up and tell me if i'm right or not cause I can't find my work pages
Rosisha
Originally posted by Cam Banks
(although I have no idea what they'll be like, being 1/8 human, 3/8 Qualinesti and 1/4 Kagonesti).
dude; that adds up to 3/4
they'll be 1/2 kagonesti 3/8qualinesti and 1/8 human . . . twisted individuals indeed.
Originally posted by Serena DarkMyst
Gilthas....the half elven king.....I always liked that concept. I am glad that the write up states him as a half elf....I always suspected that the DLCS would have him as a full elf and that was disappointing to me, so I am happy it turned out as it did. Gilthas seems to be the first official elven ruler who isn't going to muck things up with the typical elven attitiudes.
Are you kidding? Gilthas has no backbone! And he wants to start over again in the Plains of Dust. How dumb is he, anyway? I can envision a very beautiful, awesome looking elven city in the desert, I really can. I just don’t see it for the Qualinesti or Silvanesti. These are forest elves. They will never survive or feel at home in the open hostile Plains of Dust. Gilthas wife has the right idea, built up, and retake Silvanesti. It is their birthright after all. Too bad about Porthios, he would have made a great, strong, capable, elven King. He married a Silvanesti and truly loved his wife, so we can say he’s not the same elf he was in the War of the Lance.
Originally posted by carteeg
I thought the general description of a half-elf was someone with a mixture of the two who had at least 50% elven in them. (Meaning a child of a half-elf and human is considered human.) I had never however heard how high the percentage of elven lineage needed to be before the person was considered elven again... and that's a little unfortunate, since that implies that a 99.9999999% elven 0.0000001% human is considered a half-elf as well (which I don't buy).
I wouldn't buy that either.
I don't think it comes down to simple genetics. It's more a case of circumstances. Maquesta Kar-Thon is a half-elf but doesn't appear to be, for example, while Tanis Half-Elven's the classic half-elf of Dragonlance and very much is the bridge between the two races. One could assume that if Tanis and Kitiara had a child, it may also have been a half-elf, only much more human-looking; alternately, perhaps it would have been human. Gilthas could have been more elf-like but it just turned out that he wasn't.
Also, as I mentioned earlier in this thread, Gilthas probably doesn't consider himself a half-elf. For game mechanics purposes, you could use the half-elf race write-up for any quarter-human or quarter-elf mixed blooded character, but any more than that would be silly. Gilthas and the Lioness' children probably won't be mechanically identical to half-elves, in other words.
Cheers,
Cam
Originally posted by Cam Banks
I wouldn't buy that either.
Okay...wasn't it mentioned somewhere (I swear I've read this before...maybe it'll help jog someone's memory better than mine)...anyway, I thought I read somewhere, that for "game/rules purposes only," a character was considered a "half-elf" with half-elf traits up to and including being 1/4 human. Anything beyond that (as Gilthas' and Kerian's children would be) would be considered full blooded elven.
Is this perhaps in the old 2nd edition PHB, or maybe TotL or something?
Anyway...I thought that was the cut off...if the blood that runs in your veins has less than 1/4 of a certain race...then it was negligible.
So...someone who was 5/8 human 3/8 elven would be considered human for all intents and purposes, but if they were 3/4 human and 1/4 elven then they were "half-elves." A ratio of 3:1 or less is required to have the traits of both parents (statistically speaking for D&D, of course).
Does this sound familiar?
Originally posted by Baron the Curse
Are you kidding? Gilthas has no backbone!
It was either him or silvanoshei, I would take Gilthas any day! Gilthas has backbone, just not the presence or muscle to back it up...
Originally posted by Rosisha
I don't know if this works but we could look at it from an evolutionary stand point (and please note my last bio class was my sophmore year of high school and right now i'm a poli sci grad student, so I mean, we have some YEARS between my class and what i am currently trying to remember!!):
Tanis is donating:
Human --- Elf(T)
And Laurana is donating:
Elf1 ---- Elf2
So there children have the possibilities of being:
Human/Elf1
Human/Elf2
Elf(T)/Elf1
Elf(T)/Elf2
If I am remembering how to do this correctly (i think this is Malthusian Genetics????????????), then there is a 50% chance of a full elf or a half elf from a Tanis/Laurana pairing.
It's "Mendelian genetics", and No, real genetics isn't that simple. "Species" isn't a trait carried on a single gene that can be thrown into a punnett square. "Species" is a taxonomic classification that describes a group of related organisms, with "related" defined as a set of genes and the ability to interbreed. (Species can occassionally breed with other species, but it's atypical behavior and usually doesn't produce anything.)
I boldfaced "genes" in that sentence, because it's important: different physical traits are usually connected to different genes. When parents donate genes to their children, those genes sort randomly. For example, which "eye gene" a child inherits has nothing to do with which "ear gene" it inherits. (Well, sometimes it does, in that one gene can control multiple traits, but there's never a gene that controls everything.)
Putting that into gamespeak: A half-elf doesn't have "an elf gene" and "a human gene". Rather, he has lots of elf/human gene pairs -- for example, "elf eye" and "human eye", "elf ear" and "human ear", etc. For each trait, it's a 50/50 cointoss as to whether the half-elf donates an elf or human gene to his child. More importantly, it's a separate coin toss for each trait. Using the eye/ear example, the half-elf could have 4 kids, and donate 4 different combinations:
elf eye and elf ear
human eye and human ear
human eye and elf ear
elf eye and human ear
Assuming the other parent is 100% elf (donating elf ear and eye), the first child looks elvish, the second one looks traditionally half-elvish, and the last two appear somewhere inbetween, but different from each other. (I'm assuming co-dominance for theses traits, as implied by the drawings in the PHB.) The children of an elf and half-elf will almost always have some human traits, but some will have fewer than others. (While it's mathematically possible for the half-elf to donate 100% human or 100% elf genes, it's statistically unlikely.)
Quite a mess, isn't it?
So, realistically, if you want to worry about the genetics of elf/half-elf interbreeding (or human/half-elf, I guess), you need to break down "elvishness" into a set of traits that you think are genetic (eyes, ears, spell resistance, etc), and flip the coin separately for each trait.
(Or you could save yourself some grief and just declare all half-breeds are sterile, which is realistic, too. But's it's too late for that on Krynn, isn't it?)
Again, if I remembered correctly. I couldn't find the worksheet on green and yellow peas in my old notebooks.
now I know this works for eye color and stuff, but maybe not for racial characteristics. However, if the above doesn't work, how about this:
It's doesn't work for eye color, or there would only be three eye colors in the human race. There's actually more than one gene involved in eye color.
Newsflash people: High school teachers lie. Constantly. They lie about science, they lie about history, they lie about sex ed, they lie about how the government works, they're even lying about how healthy the school lunches are. Never trust your high school teachers. Question everything. But I digress.
Tanis has the following genetic characteristics
D/R =
A/a
B/b
C/c
D/d
E/e
Laurana has
D/R =
a/t
B/X
G/D
Y/u
c/K
Laurana's genes obviously represent someone with full elf traits. So if these were the dominate genes in a child, then that would be a full elf, becuase that is what they express.
Your second attempt is closer to reality (assuming I understand you correctly), but a little jumbled, in that you're neglecting the possibility of co-dominance, where both genes have an effect (possibly creating an intermediary trait between the "pureblood" extremes). For example, Half-elves +1 racial bonus on Listen, Search, and Spot checks implies co-dominance of some sense-related genes (in that it's better than humans, but worse than elves). On the other hand, they have the same spell resistance and low-light vision as elves, suggesting that "elf spell resistance" and "elf night vision" are dominant.
The real pain-in-the-ass here would creating aging tables for such characters. Life expectancy is definitely influenced by multiple genes.)
As for how elves classify children with 1 human grandparent, that's a cultural thing. In the real world, it's often an unpleasant cultural thing that creates all sorts of weird and impractical racial classifcations, like "mulatto" (one-half black), "quadroon" (one-fourth black), and "octoroon" (one-eighth black), which were all enscribed into law in some U.S. states. Whether or not elves have that many categories depends on the DM's views of elvish racism.
Now you all know why Gygax tried to discourage an excess of crossbred player characters.
Arandur
Arandur
Originally posted by Arandur
Actually Gilthas has always been presented as an elf with human blood in his veins and not a full blooded elf. Gilthas himself refers to his human ancestry on numerous occassions.
Arandur
This is true, but there was never a clear distinction. Now with that in mind, when Gilthas was first written up as an RPG character in the original Dragonlance Fifth Age Saga box set he was written up as a Qualinesti Elf. I do recall stating in my ill-thought-off thread “Dragonlance is about Restrictions” that our beloved Dragonlance is full of contradictions. This is no different.
Arandur
Arandur
Originally posted by Arandur
From a rules point of view I guess it goes 50/50. If it's a party question, let the player decide or the GM based on which genetic traits are more pronounced. I can't really understand what impact on Gilthas as an NPC using the half-elf or the elf race would make in a game anyway...
Arandur
Well, in a desperate situation the Silvanesti will probably accept a Qualinesti leader. The Silvanesti will never accept a half-elf, though. And since Gilthas is the only royal blooded elf around I think that’s a big impact to how the story can evolve.