Would half-elves qualify for human/elf only things?

[Trickster]

Would a Half-Elf qualify for things like Dweomerkeep or able learner? Furthermore would they also qualify for Elf-only things like the Elf Ranger ACF or Arcane Archer?

[Chronos]

They definitely qualify for elf things, because they have the Elf Ancestry trait that says exactly that.

They don't have a corresponding Human Ancestry trait, but many things for humans don't actually require human, just human-descended, and for the rest, there's a feat that makes you count as a human.

[InvisibleBison]

By default, half-elves count as elves, but not as humans. If they want to count as humans as well, they can take the Human Heritage feat from Races of Destiny. That book also has a variant rule that lets human-descended races count as humans by default.

[Biggus]

Elven Blood: For all effects related to race, a half-elf is considered an elf. Half-elves, for example, are just as vulnerable to special effects that affect elves as their elf ancestors are, and they can use magic items that are only usable by elves.

Personally I allow them to count as both (half-elves need all the help they can get) but by RAW it's elf-only.

[Inevitability]

Dweomerkeeper isn't human-only or elf-only, is it?


But yeah, elf blood is pretty clearly intended to allow for qualifications for elf-only material. Half-elves don't count as humans: the existence of RoD's sidebar listing that as an explicit variant makes that pretty clear.

[Maryring]

Personally I allow them to count as both (half-elves need all the help they can get) but by RAW it's elf-only.

Adding my vote to this.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Personally I allow them to count as both (half-elves need all the help they can get) but by RAW it's elf-only.

But yeah, elf blood is pretty clearly intended to allow for qualifications for elf-only material. Half-elves don't count as humans: the existence of RoD's sidebar listing that as an explicit variant makes that pretty clear.

I think it's important to note that when core came out, there were no "human only" things. Just elf-only (and some other races). So there was no need to specify "obviously since they're just as much human as they are elf, they also count as humans."

RoD making it a variant rule instead of a common sense rules clarification just so the feat they made up had a purpose is honestly really grating.

[holbita]

Regarding the human part. Races of Destiny 150 has a variant rule that may be exactly what you want.

[Inevitability]

I think it's important to note that when core came out, there were no "human only" things. Just elf-only (and some other races). So there was no need to specify "obviously since they're just as much human as they are elf, they also count as humans."

RoD making it a variant rule instead of a common sense rules clarification just so the feat they made up had a purpose is honestly really grating.

I mean, they had the chance to fix it when 3.5 rolled around, and there were definitely human-only things introduced in the 3.0 era (Yuan-Ti Tainted One template, various OA prcs). They didn't: I think that's pretty strongly indicative that regardless of what makes sense, the intent was always for half-elves to not qualify for human-only material.

[StreamOfTheSky]

I mean, they had the chance to fix it when 3.5 rolled around, and there were definitely human-only things introduced in the 3.0 era (Yuan-Ti Tainted One template, various OA prcs). They didn't: I think that's pretty strongly indicative that regardless of what makes sense, the intent was always for half-elves to not qualify for human-only material.

Considering how many mistakes fell thru the cracks between 3.0 and 3.5 printings of the core books, I'm not sure you can claim any failure to update text is "intent" rather than oversight or laziness.

At least they did eventually fix the potion of enlarge person no longer needing to be CL 5 in MIC (hilariously forgot to also fix Reduce Person potions, though).

[Inevitability]

When the 3.0 player's handbook's race section was written, there might have been a glimmer of Arcane Archer, sure. But then what about half-orcs? The DMG has no orc-only PrC, the core books carry no orc-only magic items, the only things that actually care about orcs (favored enemy, orc bane weapons, etc) all have their anti-human equivalents too . If your argument is that the developers neglected to write "Half-elves count as humans too btw" because there was no human-exclusive material to warrant such a sentence, why did they write such a sentence for half-orcs counting as orcs?

Sure, you can again play the '3rd edition developers make oversights and edit inconsistently' card, but at that point why bother? You've clearly decided that half-elves counting as humans 'makes sense' and no amount of actual text written down in the actual books is going to change your mind on that - and that's great for your table, but a bit unhelpful on a thread made by someone who wants to find out what the rules say. Like sure, you can call RoD's section about half-elves 'grating', and 'meant to justify a feat they made up' (as opposed to real D&D feats, handed down from on high upon golden tablets?), but at the end of the day, you're looking at black-on-white rules and declaring they should be ignored because they don't make sense.

(and maybe they don't! many things in D&D don't make sense! to me it doesn't make sense that a human raised by dwarves cannot become a Dwarven Defender, or a LN moradin-worshipping orc can still become a Blessed of Gruumsh, or a human reincarnated as a halfling can't become a Chameleon anymore - but ultimately every single person is going to have different standards for what makes sense, and discussions not asking for personal opinions should stick to the rules)

On a more practical level: 'being half-X means you obviously count as X', while suggested by half-elves and half-orcs, is not a rule that can safely be generalized for reasons of game balance alone. Making half-true dragons count as true dragons opens up a plethora of abusive builds that eat +3 LA (or one level in the template class) and then break the game right open. Likewise, letting half-illithid qualify for illithid-savant opens doors best left closed.

[Chronos]

I think that the main reason why they made half-elves count as elves and half-orcs count as orcs, but didn't make either count as human, is the same as the reason why both of those races are named that to begin with: They were stuck in a mentality of "humans are the default". If you say that a creature is half-elf, it's implied that the other half is human, because humans are the default. There aren't, and won't be, any things that specifically require human, because human is the default, and so everyone can do "human" things.

When they eventually wrote Races of Destiny and started making human-only things, they didn't want to change the rules from previous books (splatbooks often create new rules, but very seldom change existing rules), so they presented an optional rule, and if you didn't want to use that optional rule, also added a feat. Though strictly speaking, the Human Heritage feat also has an effect even if you're using that optional rule: Plenty of creatures of other creature types can be human-descended, and that feat makes them count as Humanoids, not just Human.

[SpyOne]

This has always been unclear.

In 1st edition only a human could be a Paladin or a Monk. Only a human, half-elf, or half-orc could be a Cleric.
Sometimes having one human parent is enough, sometimes it isn't.