Editing Half-Elf (section)

===BECMI===
Whilst half-elves didn't ''begin'' in OD&D/BECMI, that didn't mean they weren't added in later.

The first version of the concept was the ''Forester''; a [[gish]] class introduced in ''[[Known World Gazetteers|Dawn of the Emperors: Thyatis and Alphatia]]''. The basic idea was that this was a human who either had enough elfin blood to inherit the ability to wield magic and martial skills together, or else who had trained in the elfin fighting styles. Mechanically, this was handled by taking the Elf Class and forsaking the Infravision and Immunity to Ghoul Paralysis. Simple, easy to understand, and effective.

The [[Known World Gazetteers|Elves of Aelfheim]] splatbook claims that half-elves in the AD&D sense do not exist on [[Mystara]]; humans and elves are interfertile, but the child fundamentally takes after one race, though its appearance and its innate abilities may not match. To quote the segment of the book itself... ''"As far as can be told, the elven traits are inherited through the female line. The product of a union between human female and male elf is always human. Moreover, the male children are always stillborn. When female elf mates with male human, the male children are always elves, the female children always human. Of course, all of these female 'human' children have the potential for growing up to bear elf children of either sex."'' If you need a little help deciphering this, you're not alone.

The second version of a [[Mystara]]n half-elf, and the one closer to the AD&D "human-elf hybrid" in lore, appeared in the serial "[[The Voyage of the Princess Ark]]". Debuting in issue #178 of [[Dragon Magazine]], the "true" [[Mystara]]n half-elf is native to the land of Eusdria on the Savage Coast, and is the result of divine meddling by the Immortals Fredar and Fredara (better known to other lands as [[Frey]] and [[Freya]]), who created them in an effort to promote and increase homogeneity in the land that worshipped them. The trait is mostly dominant - a child with a half-elf parent has a 65% chance of being a half-elf itself, although it doesn't clarify if this only applies to half-elf/human couples, or if it means a half-elf/pure-elf breeding has a 65% chance of a half-elf and a 35% chance of a pure elf. Mechanically, half-elves are treated as humans, allowing them to take any class open to humans and achieve unlimited levels - their elven ancestry manifests in having the Elfin Infravision racial trait alongside increased longevity (they use the [[halfling]] aging table instead of the human one), bonuses for which they pay by suffering a -5% penalty to their Experience Points.