Why did DnD remove Half-Elves?

Like, whhhhhy? I get the removal of half-orcs, because the true orc species really filled in that niche and to make room for other species, but Half-Elves are a staple of fantasy! Why were these removed?

They actually brought it back in Eberron Forge of the Artificer.  They just renamed it Khoravar

From a social perspective the concept of "Half-breed" is generally an out of date concept that people prefer to move past, due to it's real-world historical analog.  There are many other 'staples of fantasy' that have fallen out of the zeitgeist, like Orcs being mindless brutes that have nothing but bloodlust.

Game mechanics-wise, the advice is to treat them as being "more elf" or "more human" and use one of those classes, but as Eberron has a unique and culturally independent group of humanoids with a mixed Elven and Human heritage that have established themselves as a unique species with their own Dragonmark, they can return as the Khorovar.

Quote from bthec18 >>

They actually brought it back in Eberron Forge of the Artificer.  They just renamed it Khoravar

That's interesting, I did not actually know about this.

Also, "half-orc" is back through Eberron too, in Keith Baker's Exploring Eberron 2024, with the Jhorgun'taal

https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/exeb/chapter-6-character-options#JhorgunapostaalHalforc

There was some guidance in the playtest content on making mixed-lineage characters, but I do not believe it survived into the final interaction of the game.  Essentially, you picked one species to play as mechanically, but could change some of your non-mechanical, physical characteristics to match your other parent.  Since this provides no mechanical benefit different than playing any other species would, I think most any DM would allow you to use this method of ancestry generation.

There is also a great third-party book called “An Elf and an Orc had a Little Baby” that has more intensive rules for using a point buy system to mix and match species.  Pretty great, often balanced or justifiably underpowered as a trade off for flexibility, I highly recommend for folks who want mixed ancestry.  Of course, it is third party, so would be subject to DM review and approval. 

Along with the irl social optics, I suspect they moved away from having explicit half races because they had no intention of expanding the repertoire any further, which makes it kinda weird that only orc/human and elf/human pairings produce offspring, particularly as the playable species options ballooned.

I did feel that half elf was more of a loss than half orc at the time- half orc has always basically just been orcs when they’re not ready to acknowledge orcs themselves as a PC race, but half elves did a decent job of capturing that classic “halfway between the mundane and the fantastic” vibe in 5e. Wasn’t anything like a deal-breaker for 2024, but I’m glad they figured out a way to work most of the themes back in with the latest Eberron book.

They removed it from the Mechanics in the core books but you can still do it story and thematically. Had this conversation with a bunch of friends who were not happy about the removal, because they felt they as mixed ancestry people were being erased from the game. They weren't.

Pick Either Human or Elf mechanically and alter aspects like height, weight, etc, and build it into their backstory. The example i used for the friends who felt erased, is I made a character that was mechanically an elf, then said "His father is a human Blacksmith so he has a stocky/portly build and a beard with a lot of body hair, so other elves either get cool with it or they keep being judgmental pricks." 
Took five minutes and then I convinced them they didn't have to erase their 8 year running characters if they wanted to update to 2024.

All the other stuff has been litigated to death and i ain't doing that again. There is no Erasure of lived experiences, yes you can still play with the themes and use the game to process unresolved issues, yes they are still in the lore, and yeah it felt weird and sudden but it has been a few years, we should be used to it.

Admittedly I'm a pasty white guy from England so my lived experience is different from a lot of other people (so tell me to butt out if I'm being insensitive) but why do people always question/complain about/resent the Half Elf being removed but you never hear a peep about the fact half-Dwarf or half-gnome has never been an option or the fact that the two half races we did have were both other half-human? I admit that the answer should have been to expand options rather than remove, even just a side bar like they had in UA if they weren't willing to go full An Elf and an Orc had a Little Baby, but it seems to responses to stuff being removed have all been very selective and many just based on the Half-Elf being a pretty powerful mechanical choice

It makes perfect sense with the change in terminology. It's sort of in the biological definition of species that you can't mix them to get a new species.

Quote from Frachese >>

It makes perfect sense with the change in terminology. It's sort of in the biological definition of species that you can't mix them to get a new species.

This is simply wrong.  There are plenty of creatures in the real world that are the offspring of two different species.  A mule, for example, is a hybrid creature of a donkey and a horse.  Applying this logic, the terminology of species is not an impediment to creating player characters of mixed ancestry.  Notably, mules have different characteristics than both donkeys and horses, so creating a new set of stats to represent the hybrid would mechanically make sense. 

What you probably meant is that the "biological definition of a species is that you can't mix them to create a viable offspring--an offspring capable of reproducing on its own."  This definition would not necessarily be relevant to half-species in D&D, since it is conceivable that someone would be mixed ancestry, but also sterile like a mule.

But, it also is a wrong definition; a commonly held myth perpetuated by inaccurate grade school science teachers.  There are plenty of examples of species that can breed with other species and create viable offspring.  Typically, they need to have the same number of chromosomes.  The reason a mule is sterile is not because it is half of two different species, but because a horse has 64 chromosomes and a donkey has 62.  This leaves the mule with 63, which then can't be divided into pairs, and thus cannot produce fertility. 

The most famous example of a mixed species?  You.  And Me.  And all humans.  Ancient humans came in a number of different species, but they were capable of interbreeding and creating viable offspring.  So, while Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals might have been different species, they did breed, those offspring were viable, and now all Homo Sapiens alive today have a bit of Neanderthals DNA mixed into our blood.

To sum, even by the inaccurate definition of species commonly taught in schools, the terminology is not an impediment to half-species; and it certainly is not an impediment if you look at more accurate scientific information. 

Quote from CunningSmile >>

Admittedly I'm a pasty white guy from England so my lived experience is different from a lot of other people (so tell me to butt out if I'm being insensitive) but why do people always question/complain about/resent the Half Elf being removed but you never hear a peep about the fact half-Dwarf or half-gnome has never been an option or the fact that the two half races we did have were both other half-human? I admit that the answer should have been to expand options rather than remove, even just a side bar like they had in UA if they weren't willing to go full An Elf and an Orc had a Little Baby, but it seems to responses to stuff being removed have all been very selective and many just based on the Half-Elf being a pretty powerful mechanical choice

 
1: The mechanics minded tend to complain a lot more about it because Numbers are their life.

2: I have heard people wanting other mixed ancestries, but they tend to be drawn to it for story reasons and that is much easier to tac onto an existing species choice, so they are often less disgruntled about it and thus, don't complain. 

3: I think Half-Elf for the story-oriented peeps has such a hold because of existing characters they are drawn to. Tannis Half-Elven, Elrond from LOTR, Whil Ohmsford from chronicles of Shannara, and more broadly to the "I feel torn between two different worlds and don't fit neatly into either" ethos that comes with Half-Elves. It is an outlet to explore and Process feelings cultural alienation that has a narrative scaffold already built in. 

The only "Torn between Dwarf and human" type Character I can think of is Terry Practett's 'Carrot Ironfoundersson' a human adopted by Dwarves who didn't realize he would get so tall. His only real conflict with his culture is banging his head on doorways, and being clean shaven. Not a lot to work with roleplay wise, so less people going 'i want to do my take.'

Also the "Dwelf" existed for a while and while interesting, doesn't seem like it took off. Its lackluster reception might have been why they never bothered again.

They only "removed" half-elves (and half-orcs) in the non-narrative mechanical sense. To quote Crawford:

“Frankly, we are not comfortable, and haven’t been for years with any of the options that start with ‘half’…The half construction is inherently racist so we simply aren’t going to include it in the new Player’s Handbook.”

Now, many a bad-actor has misrepresented this as meaning "OMG Jeremy Crawford thinks the existence of mixed-ancestry people is racist". That's not what is being said.

What is being said is that the way that D&D mechanically delineated mixed-ancestry peoples (specifically those of orc and elf lineage) was inherently racist. It's othering and problematic because it says that being of a mixed ancestry makes you objectively disconnected from either of your heritages.

So what they've done is simply said that being part-orc or part-elf or part any lineage doesn't make you mechanically different in the way the game rules care about. It's purely narrative.

Now, then there's Khoravar from Eberron. These are a culture more so that just a species. From the book:

Over the course of centuries, those descended from both humans and elves have developed their own communities and traditions in Khorvaire. The rise of House Lyrandar and House Medani has strengthened this identity. Members of these communities call themselves Khoravar, an Elvish term meaning “children of Khorvaire,” as they dislike the term “half-elf.”

tl;dr - they removed the mechanical options because making someone of mixed ancestry objectively separate from their parents was problematic. But you can still play a character of mixed ancestry, you just don't need special mechanical options if the ancestries just happened to be human and elf, or human and orc.

Quote from Caerwyn_Glyndwr >>

Quote from Frachese >>

It makes perfect sense with the change in terminology. It's sort of in the biological definition of species that you can't mix them to get a new species.

 

This is simply wrong.  There are plenty of creatures in the real world that are the offspring of two different species.  A mule, for example, is a hybrid creature of a donkey and a horse.  Applying this logic, the terminology of species is not an impediment to creating player characters of mixed ancestry.  Notably, mules have different characteristics than both donkeys and horses, so creating a new set of stats to represent the hybrid would mechanically make sense. 

What you probably meant is that the "biological definition of a species is that you can't mix them to create a viable offspring--an offspring capable of reproducing on its own."  This definition would not necessarily be relevant to half-species in D&D, since it is conceivable that someone would be mixed ancestry, but also sterile like a mule.

But, it also is a wrong definition; a commonly held myth perpetuated by inaccurate grade school science teachers.  There are plenty of examples of species that can breed with other species and create viable offspring.  Typically, they need to have the same number of chromosomes.  The reason a mule is sterile is not because it is half of two different species, but because a horse has 64 chromosomes and a donkey has 62.  This leaves the mule with 63, which then can't be divided into pairs, and thus cannot produce fertility. 

The most famous example of a mixed species?  You.  And Me.  And all humans.  Ancient humans came in a number of different species, but they were capable of interbreeding and creating viable offspring.  So, while Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals might have been different species, they did breed, those offspring were viable, and now all Homo Sapiens alive today have a bit of Neanderthals DNA mixed into our blood.

To sum, even by the inaccurate definition of species commonly taught in schools, the terminology is not an impediment to half-species; and it certainly is not an impediment if you look at more accurate scientific information. 

 What I meant is what I wrote. Mules are not a species.

While there are different definitions for species, the most common one is fertile offspring. I don't know on what you're basing your assertion that it would be an inaccurate definition. And by that definition, if two "species" mix, then they were not in fact separate species to begin with.

Quote from Frachese >>

Quote from Caerwyn_Glyndwr >>

Quote from Frachese >>

It makes perfect sense with the change in terminology. It's sort of in the biological definition of species that you can't mix them to get a new species.

 

This is simply wrong.  There are plenty of creatures in the real world that are the offspring of two different species.  A mule, for example, is a hybrid creature of a donkey and a horse.  Applying this logic, the terminology of species is not an impediment to creating player characters of mixed ancestry.  Notably, mules have different characteristics than both donkeys and horses, so creating a new set of stats to represent the hybrid would mechanically make sense. 

What you probably meant is that the "biological definition of a species is that you can't mix them to create a viable offspring--an offspring capable of reproducing on its own."  This definition would not necessarily be relevant to half-species in D&D, since it is conceivable that someone would be mixed ancestry, but also sterile like a mule.

But, it also is a wrong definition; a commonly held myth perpetuated by inaccurate grade school science teachers.  There are plenty of examples of species that can breed with other species and create viable offspring.  Typically, they need to have the same number of chromosomes.  The reason a mule is sterile is not because it is half of two different species, but because a horse has 64 chromosomes and a donkey has 62.  This leaves the mule with 63, which then can't be divided into pairs, and thus cannot produce fertility. 

The most famous example of a mixed species?  You.  And Me.  And all humans.  Ancient humans came in a number of different species, but they were capable of interbreeding and creating viable offspring.  So, while Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals might have been different species, they did breed, those offspring were viable, and now all Homo Sapiens alive today have a bit of Neanderthals DNA mixed into our blood.

To sum, even by the inaccurate definition of species commonly taught in schools, the terminology is not an impediment to half-species; and it certainly is not an impediment if you look at more accurate scientific information. 

 What I meant is what I wrote. Mules are not a species.

While there are different definitions for species, the most common one is fertile offspring. I don't know on what you're basing your assertion that it would be an inaccurate definition. And by that definition, if two "species" mix, then they were not in fact separate species to begin with.

 That's an outdated definition of species that's not typically used in biology anymore, even if it is still used by laypeople.  Currently, a species is defined by a number of different factors, including reproductive compatibility not just in the capability of producing fertile offspring but also in mating behavior and genetic transfer between populations.  That's why, for example, domestic cats are considered a separate species from numerous other small cats such as the serval, Asian leopard cat, and European wildcat despite being able to produce fertile offspring with all of them.

Quote from Frachese >>

It makes perfect sense with the change in terminology. It's sort of in the biological definition of species that you can't mix them to get a new species.

 Actually, you can mix two species to get a new one. It's called hybrid speciation. Plenty of species are the result of this, like the Clymene dolphin or the New Mexico whiptail

The real-world definition of "species" has nothing whatsoever to do with how D&D playable species work or why Half-Elves weren't included as a playable species in 5.5e D&D.

OP, may I recommend you buy Eberron:Forge of the Artificer, take Khoravar, & treat them as FR half-elves if you must have them. If Khoravar are in the Eberron pack in the Marketplaces, get them that way & save some money in the process.

But I strongly advise instead focusing more on cultures a PC lives/lived with/in than what a character is born into, body-wise.

Gets rid of the squicky eugenics issues & terms that some seem to treat as needed because of The Lore.