Half-human half-elf is a race mentioned in the D&D handbook. Is there also a half-dwarf half-elf combination? And would that be common? If it doesn't exist, how could I create the stats for it myself?
[RPG] How to play a Half-Dwarf Half-Elf
dnd-5ehomebrewraces
Related Solutions
Why are templates used?
Pretty much exactly this sort of situation: changes that can be made to a variety of creatures, rather than specifically writing up a new creature/race for each combination.
What steps would I use to make a balanced template?
This is very tricky. It would depend a lot on what you are trying to do.
In my opinion, the first thing to do is to be careful about precedent: templates are balanced by their Level Adjustment (LA), but most templates and creatures have much more LA than they should. It’s very difficult to play with more than LA +1 or LA +2, and furthermore even if someone wants to do it, it can make life very difficult for the DM.
LA leads to skewed characters, where some of their stats and abilities are too good for their level, but other stats and abilities are too weak for their level, leading to weird situations where one kind of challenge, normally something of a challenge, can be solved automatically, but another, also usually only a moderate challenge, is suicidal. That makes it pretty difficult to design challenges.
So I would aim for LA +1 templates, most likely. LA +2 only if you’re very careful. Actually, I would consider LA +0 (giving drawbacks and benefits in roughly equal measure) before LA +2.
LA +0
This template effectively changes one LA +0 race into another LA +0 race. The problem is that, for example, LA +0 races rarely if ever give +4 to an ability score, or apply a −4 penalty – and doing so can be problematic when the +4 is to something that a character relies on exclusively, or the −4 is to something the character doesn’t care about. So I’d probably recommend avoiding ability score adjustments altogether, or doing something like
+2 racial bonus to X and −2 racial penalty to Y; does not stack with racial bonuses or racial penalties from one’s actual race. If one already has a racial bonus to X, one does not receive the racial penalty to Y, and if one already has the racial penalty to Y, one does not receive the racial bonus to X.
Which is verbose and annoying, but eliminates the +4 or −4 scenarios.
Other changes should probably lean slightly towards more drawback than benefit, since you must assume that players will try to apply benefits where most useful and drawbacks where least painful. It should only be slight, however. That’s a tricky line to draw.
Skill bonuses and penalties, in the −2 to +2 range, are very safe; you can probably just hand out bonuses and penalties equally and it will be fine. Bonuses up to +4 are possible, but I’d be leery about them.
Bonus martial weapon proficiencies don’t usually matter too much, though it’s hard to imagine an appropriate drawback. They’re probably safe enough to give in very small number.
Bonuses and penalties to saving throws are pretty good, if given out equally. Characters don’t get to choose when they’re making a Fort vs. a Will save.
Bonus feats (aside from Martial Weapon Proficiency) are probably too good for an LA +0 template.
LA +1
LA +1 means that you count as a level higher than you actually are for XP, leveling up, and in theory, what sorts of foes you can face. It’s very, very difficult to write something that is worth exactly one level regardless of how many levels you actually have (i.e. LA +1/Some Class 1 all the way to LA +1/Some Class 19, for all classes); most LA +1 creatures and templates are worth not even close to a level basically all the time.
The best things that LA +1 templates can give out are things that will stack with future classes. Maybe you don’t get all the features of the Rogue class, but you do get 1d6 Sneak Attack damage. Or you get Unarmed Strike damage like a Monk, that stacks with Monk levels, but not the other features. Most classes have these kinds of “partial features” that you can give out.
Feats, particularly good feats, often work out similarly. Bonus feats are quite nice. Maybe you don’t get a free pick, but you get two pre-selected feats: that’s better (but less flexible) than what the Fighter gets.
Most published creatures and templates do not do this, however. The most common thing you see are ability score changes. These are what lead to skewed characters. I recommend avoiding these, though a few small ones (a +4, a few more +2s, only a single −2 or maybe none at all) are appropriate since the character misses out on base HP, Constitution-based HP, base saving throw bonuses, base attack bonuses, and skill ranks. Bonuses to Constitution should be common, in fact, because HP increases with level so much.
Larger skill bonuses are also appropriate, but remember that an LA +1 character basically has a −1 penalty to all his favorite skills because his skill rank maximum is 1 less than it would otherwise be (and he has one level’s worth fewer skill points). I think it would actually be a really good idea to give “free ranks” in several skills (say, 4-6, or even 8-10 if you envision the race to be for Rogues and other skill-heavy classes) to mitigate that.
LA +2
These are very hard to balance. You have to give really good stuff, without overpowering the character. Being behind two spellcasting levels, in particular, is extremely painful: if you want spellcasters to consider this, you have to give them great stuff (including, perhaps, partially progressing their spellcasting, à la some prestige classes).
Really, I recommend against these.
Most of what I said for LA +1 just goes double here. You also want unique features, stuff they couldn’t just get by not taking the template and going into classes regularly. Spell Resistance is pretty common, but SR is a double-edged sword and not really all that good. Damage Reduction is definitely better, though DR/magic will soon be close to worthless. This is going to involve some creativity on your part, I imagine. Without more details on the races in question, it’s hard for me to suggest anything.
What’s the real difference between a race and a template as it relates to what I'm trying to create?
Templates go on top of races, so you get both. With a race, you have to choose between the two. That’s the only real difference between them.
Where can I find more information on these topics?
I will have to get back to you on that; I’m not sure.
Yes, a half-elf could be half-drow.
Drow and humans can have children, and the resulting children are half-drow. In previous editions, half-drow were a bit mechanically different to normal half-elves, as they had a different set of racial traits based on their drow parentage; in 5e, however, they seem to be much closer. The Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide says of half-elf parentage:
HALF-ELF VARIANTS
Some half-elves in Faerun have a racial trait in place of the Skill Versatility trait. If your DM allows it, your half-elf character can forgo Skill Versatility and instead take the elf trait Keen Senses or a trait based on your elf parentage:
From this list, you can pick to be a descendent of wood elves, sun elves, of "aquatic heritage", or of drow, with the choice determining which alternative racial trait you might take.
This is an optional choice and thus your half-elf can be of drow heritage without any mechanical differences from the standard half-elf. Strictly, this is specific to the setting of the Forgotten Realms as it's in the SCAG, but there's no compelling reason it would differ in most settings.
You would expect a half-drow to look noticeably different, however, given the black skin/white hair/funky eyes combination that drow have going on - so if this hasn't come up before it might be a bit of a retcon to the character's appearance. NPCs who met a half-drow would usually react quite differently to meeting a normal elf or half-elf as the drow are widely feared and reviled on the surface.
Best Answer
Traditionally,1 humans (and dragons2) in D&D are just... amazingly, maybe magically, compatible with other races. Massive numbers of them. Any time a race is “half” something, the other half is human 90% of the time. And there are numerous races that are human hybrids without “half” in their name.3
For the last several editions at the very least, half-elf has been a core race, and half-orcs were too in 3rd, 3.5, and 5th (and 4th got them not long after, in Player’s Handbook 2). In all cases, the other half was human. In fact, in none of these editions were there any elven hybrids with anything that wasn’t human (as nitsua60 points out in comments, orcs could also hybridize with ogres to create ogrillons, a very rare case of a hybrid with zero human, dragon, or outsider blood).
And during this time, dwarves only ever saw one hybrid: muls, which are specific to the Dark Sun campaign setting, and are again half-human.
So for whatever reason, in default D&D, humans are astonishingly capable of hybridizing with everything else, but none of those they can interbreed with seem able to interbreed with one another. While not... strictly impossible, I suppose,5 biologically this is extremely unlikely. Then again, so are a panoply of independent humanoid races, so meh.
It is up to your DM whether this fact is canonical, or just a quirk of the material they’ve chosen to publish and not representative of the world you’re actually playing in. To my knowledge, there are no explicit statements that elves and dwarves can’t hybridize with things other than humans, they just never published such a thing.6 So your DM could easily homebrew something. For that, nitsua60 has already pointed you to the correct place: Dungeon Master’s Guide page 285.
I am not aware of anything prior to 3rd edition that contradicts anything I am saying, but there is a ton of material, particularly for AD&D, that I have only passing familiarity with. Particularly the Planescape setting is likely to have something. I am researching this possibility, but for now assume all of my statements apply only to D&D editions by Wizards of the Coast.
You can apparently make a half-dragon with anything that’s got a living body. Half-dragon animals are not even all that unusual in the books. Half-dragon oozes are even possible. Many of these are chalked up to magic rather than natural reproduction, and even in the cases of “natural” reproduction they’re facilitated by dragons’ innate polymorphing ability, but still.
For example, the original Eberron Campaign Setting rulebook for D&D 3.5 introduced four new races – and three of them were human hybrids (changelings are half-doppelgangers, shifters are half-lycanthropes, and kalashtar are half-dreams3.1). The Dark Sun campaign setting has half-human, half-dwarf muls. Forgotten Realms has got a bajillion elven races, and many of them detail their own special half-human counterparts.
D&D 3e and 3.5 had a concept called “templates” that could be applied to a wide variety of creatures and races; as hinted above, half-dragon was one of these. So you could have a half-dragon elf or a half-ogre orc or whatever, since half-dragon and half-ogre were implemented as templates. No template for half-elf or half-orc was ever implemented, however, so you couldn’t do that with them.
Please don’t start quoting that thing you think is the definition of “species” at me – there are numerous edge-cases that make “able to produce a viable offspring” fail as a definition of species. In fact, defining the word “species” strictly is extremely difficult and there is no scientific consensus on a precise and strict definition for deciding when two things are in separate species.
KorvinStarmast reports that in 1st edition AD&D DMG and PHB state that the world is human-centric and that half-elves and half-orcs are the only half-breeds. This is obviously not true, since there’s plenty of others (that are also half-human, and a very few that aren’t), but it does give some weight to the idea that this is not just a quirk of what was actually published.