Hi, 

I want to make a Witch Hunter, who is the son of a wealthy human adventurer (fallen Paladin) and a witch (a Hag).  I know that hags reproduce by eating babies, but can they also reproduce conventionally, and could they give birth to a boy? The boy grew up with his father and mother and an older sister, and they were reasonably happy until the older sister came of age and started indiscriminately munching on babies.

The entire family was in danger and so. So that he might at least save his son, the father was forced to denounce his wife and daughter as being hags (witches) and killed both of them, before killing himself.  Confused, and half-mad with grief, the boy connected the loss of his family to the existence of witches (Hags) and set about learning to exterminate them.  At first, he joined a holy order, but his hot temper and hatred for and desire to kill all witches made him unsuitable, and the order expelled him.  He then wandered around for a while, taking out his anger on the world and falling more and more into darkness.  The more he fell into darkness, the less he cared.  They had taken his family from him, taken away everyone he loved - their existence was a blight upon the world, and they must all die.  In his desire to kill all witched, he had become a murder, killing innocent people. 

Eventually, though, he came to a village in which a real Hag lived, and after learning that she was a Hag, he set out to kill her.  However, he was woefully unprepared for the horrors that awaited him, and the Hag almost killed him.  He only survived because a real Witch Hunter saved him.

The Witch Hunter saw something in the boy, the same fire that burned within her, the same desire to rid the world of evil and so she adopted him.  The Witch Hunter spent years teaching the boy the art of hunting and killing witches. The boy grew into a strong, confident, well trained young man, and when age finally caught up to his adoptive mother, he stepped up and took her place.  His rage and desire for revenge no longer control him.  He no longer kills the innocent, but still, he grieves for the family stolen from him.  A pain that he blots out with his work and when his grief becomes so much that not even his purpose can blot out the sorrow, copious amounts of ale and debauchery.

The thing is though, none of this would work if Hags can only have girl children.  So, can Hags give birth to boys, and what do you think of this concept?

I am looking forward to reading all your thoughts, opinions and comments.

XD

Foxes

Hags always produce daughters when they consume a baby, but nothing in the Monster Manual explicitly addresses sex between a humanoid and a fey/fiend hag. Humans can produce cambions with at least some fiends though, so it's not out of the question.

Also worth pointing out witches don't necessarily have to be hags.

You may be interested in the Story & Lore forum. It's made specifically for stuff like this.

Anyway, all monster details are subject to DM - anything about them can be changed as needed to fit your campaign, and the books even encourage this.

It works however you want it to. If you say hags can reproduce normally and make boys, then they can.

Solved.

Sorry about that.  I thought that since was asking two questions at once, it didn't belong in any of the other places.

According to Volo's Guide to Monsters

Hags make more hags by snatching and devouring human infants, birthing daughters who turn into hags on entering the thirteenth year of their lives.

It seems that they only have female offspring.

But it's not like that can/should stop you:

• Ignore the lore, you're not beholden to it
• Play a female Witch Hunter
• Gender != sex, play a Witch Hunter who's a man born of a hag

That is interesting @Davedamon.  That tells us how Hags make new Hags, but it doesn't specifically say that Hags can't have children conventionally either.  So, perhaps the process of creating a new Hag is a magical one, that always produces a daughter. However, if the Hag got pregnant and gives birth to a child in a conventional way, perhaps those children can be either girls or boys.

• Son = normal conception and normal pregnancy.
• Daughter = magical conception and birth, in the way Hags, conceive and produce other Hags.

Thus, I could make the character the son of a Hag, without explicitly breaking any lore.

I will have to clear that with the DM, to make sure he is okay with me doing this, but I like the idea.

That tells us how Hags make new Hags, but it doesn't specifically say that Hags can't have children conventionally either.

Uh, Hags making hags is hags having children.

That's like saying "That tells us how Humans make new Humans, but it doesn't specifically say that Humans can't have children conventionally either"

That is conventional...for hags; they eat babies (usually human) and produce hag daughters. Remember that hags are fey (mostly, there's one fiendish hag) so mortal reproductive methods wouldn't apply to them.

What you're proposing would 'break' lore, but why does that matter? Just break it.

Quote from Davedamon>>

Uh, Hags making hags is hags having children.

Yes, but that doesn't mean they can't produce non-hag children through normal sexual reproduction.

And again, it's not clear at all that humanoids can't reproduce with non-humanoids when you consider some Eladrin elves are fey, and humans can in fact produce offspring with fiends. There's also genasi, which can result from humans and elemental genies, and half-dragons that can occur when a polymorphed dragon mates.

I guess it depends on if you read the sentence "Hags make more hags by..." being synonymous with "Hags reproduce by.." or a distinctly different concept. The former seems more likely from a writing/publishing PoV, it's a much more audience friendly/accessible way of phrasing it.

If it was the latter, I'd expect there to be a clause stating what their 'normal' offspring are like.

I should stress that this really feels like one of those cases where you just chuck the lore out of the window or make an exception or whatever.

I remember a male hag child in Neverwinter Nights 2. He was one of the party members in the Mask of the Betrayer campaign. If those games are official lore than it is possible.

Firstly, I'm going to tediously repeat that: You can write whatever story you want to if you are the DM.  Mostly for forum legalistics.  

Secondly, I'm confused by the order and alignments of characters in this backstory.  Isn't the Fallen Paladin already sort of evil?  And how does he get to know this Hag (in the Biblical sense) and raise a family without knowing that she is a Hag and therefore a creature prone to eating children?   If this is a man who likes the idea of seeing his spawn grow up to adulthood, he should have taken the boy as soon as the baby was born and tried to get very far away.  Either that or killed the Hag on the spot.  I don't see how there is any room for any kind of happy family scenario for any length of time unless this Fallen Paladin father is either a complete idiot (Lawful Stupid?) or is evil to the point of staying around with the Hag for the purpose of trying to manipulate her to acquire more power for himself.  In the latter situation, he would not have killed himself.  Either way, the resultant son who becomes a Witch-hunter would likely be pretty traumatized from being raised by either a very incompetent parent or by a very power hungry one. 

Thirdly, is this character supposed to be just confused?  A lot of witches aren't Hags.  Hag powers are different than that of most magic-users in several notable ways.  Their ability to cooperate and propensity to loathe other Hags is one of them.  You can throw some this lore out the window, but I hope you are clear about the lore you are writing so that it ultimately makes sense to others.

https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Hag according to this, Hags can have sexual intercourse with humanoids, but if the result is a male child they are hagspawn, an outcast of Hag society.

I have a similar story, but my work around was simple and don't necessarily break lore, I'm using the dark one back story I rolled, that a hag kidnapped and raised me, so technically she doesn't eat me, my character is male.. so my workaround was this I was simply her lure to get young girls to come to her hut in a swamp, so my character has endured watching her eat a babie or 2 or 100... so technically I'm the adopted brother of alot of green hags.. so just food for thought.

Quote from SladeTracey >>

I remember a male hag child in Neverwinter Nights 2. He was one of the party members in the Mask of the Betrayer campaign. If those games are official lore than it is possible.

 Yeah it's a different edition, but nwn2 had hagspawn. So male offspring from hags existed in dnd 3.5 lore at least

https://nwn2.fandom.com/wiki/Hagspawn 

Edit: from the wiki it looks like hag reproduction was handled differently in 3.5 than 5e. So work with your dm.

In 3.5 for forgotten realms that had a book: Unapproachable East. One of the races was Hagspawn. They were male hags offspring they had no female counterparts.

It's possible that you were born with a female body, but either throught magic ot surgery changed to a biological male? Also, like other people said, it's okay to ignore the lore sometimes.