Half Human Hybrid / Tabletop Games

---

Half Human Hybrids in Tabletop Games.

---

Card Games

• Munchkin offers a Half-Breed card that will allow a character to be two species or one species without any of that race's disadvantages. The seventh expansion, Even More Good Cards, gave us the Chimaera^note You can equip infinite race cards. and One-Third-Breed^note You can equip up to three race cards. Having two or less cards makes you a Human in addition to your current races; having just one removes all the racial disadvantages. cards. Does it make your brain hurt? It should.
• Magic: The Gathering:
  • In the crossover sets with Dungeons and Dragons. When depicting these characters, Magic simply lists any relevant species in the usual Species Class combination for subtypes. For example, a Half-Elf Monk has the type line, "Human Elf Monk."
  • Within Magic's own lore, however, it's discussed with regards to one of the Official Couples, Jace and Vraska. They admit during one story that they're pretty certain humans and Ravnican gorgons can't interbreed—because if it was possible, they probably would have found out by that point.

Role-Playing Games

• Alpha Blue humanity's main distinction is that it can breed with just about every other humanoid species, resulting in a lot of hybrids.
• Children Of The Sun gives this as a special power that all humans have (none of the other races are capable of mating with each other). Every humanoid race can mate with a human and there'll be a Half-Human Hybrid as a result with different races getting different resulting powers (such as children with a humanoid turtle, will have shells on their back). Given that the majority of these races are violent by nature or hostile to humanity the vast majority of these hybrid children are Child by Rape.
• The Chronicles of Aeres, being a Dungeons & Dragons setting, naturally features half-elves, but it also features half-dwarves; the two races are collectively referred to as "half-bloods" and are generally treated decently.
• CthulhuTech features both positive and negative examples. Nazzadi, essentially humans engineered to match the Proud Warrior Race Rubber-Forehead Aliens tropes that ended up a bit too good on the Honest Warrior Poet side of the scale, are essentially recognized and treated as humans by almost all of the New Earth Government. They're genetically similar enough to interbreed with humans. Such hybrids are supposedly treated like anyone else. Outsider Taint is a more magical sort of hybrid, formed either the natural way with The Deep Ones or through the wrong sorcery roll, and are treated a bit less kindly by the NEG—the lightest Outsider Taint makes you legally inhuman. Since it tends to come with unnatural cravings, freakish appearances, and whispers of ancient gods in the ear, that might be justified.
• Dungeons & Dragons has taken this trope to nearly ridiculous levels, up to and including half-dragons. (This last has been explained by the fact that dragons often have the ability to polymorph, or change their shape.)
  • "Half-breed" can be both a race and a template. Half-orc and half-elf are races, but half-dragon and half-fiend are templates that can be added on to any sapient race. Applying one to the other yields results like "half-dragon-half-fiend-half-orc". What would that family reunion be like?
  • In 3rd edition, a fairly substantial chunk of the populace (and two player classes) are descended, at least remotely, from dragons.
  • 2nd edition lampshades it with the Mongrelmen, a monster race that's said to be the result of centuries of cross-breeding and tend to have mismatched bits of fur, scales, hide, etc.
  • 4th edition half-elves gain bonuses that correspond to neither of their parents.
  • You'd think the above would be enough but there are also people who are 75% humans, 25% something else. These include planetouched (Aasimar, Tieflings, and Genasi, descended from celestials, fiends, and elementals respectively), and Yuan-ti (part reptile). And that's before we hit heritage feats and bloodlines. You've got to wonder if there is such a thing as 'pure' humans in the D&D universe.
    • It's somewhat notable that, in Fourth Edition, Aasimar, Tieflings and Genasi were all retconned to remove the half-human background. Tieflings are the descendants of humans who made a corruptive pact with devils, Aasimar (now renamed Devas) are Angels that gave up their "angelhood" to become more like mortals and who continuously reincarnate/resurrect (Time Lord style) rather than breeding, and Genasi are humans infused with one or more kinds of elemental energy.
    • Earlier editions also featured the unusual Cambion and Alu-fiend demons, who were the half-human children of incubi and succubi respectively. Interestingly, both had a slim chance of not having the ethics of being pure evil, which put them heads and shoulders (morally speaking) over most other fiends.
  • Perhaps most disturbingly, the Book of Erotic Fantasy includes a table of crossbreeds, which implies that humans and dragons are the only two species which can have sex with virtually anything and produce viable offspring. Humans Are Special — in their pants.
  • Orcs in D&D are almost as compatible with other races as humans. In fact, technically many orcs are actually half-orcs as they aggressively interbreed with their monstrous allies like goblinoids, ogres, and giants, as well as the more "civilized" races. The offspring of orc and goblinoid or ogre interbreeding look very close to pureblood orcs. In fact, the only known race where it is flat-out impossible for orcs to interbreed with are elves, due to the burning enmity between the orcish and elvish pantheons.
  • Dark Sun: Muls are half-dwarves, and lack the ability to reproduce. They are usually purpose-bred, being stronger, and having far greater endurance (can work for days), than either parent species, but their chances of surviving to come to term, and of the mother surviving bearing them, are somewhat low. Still, their great value as slaves means that the casualties are worth it.
  • Dungeons Of Drakkenheim: The most populous races in the world after humans are various half-human hybrids, created over two thousand years ago when the disappearance of the original warlock patrons and the rise of sorcerers led to sorcerers courting various magical creatures in hopes of breeding more powerful mystical children. These include, but aren't necessarily limited to, dragonborn, half-elves, aasimar, genasi and tieflings. Presumably, they're all True Breeding Hybrids, since this was over two thousand years ago.
  • Dragonlance:
    • Half-elves are present. Indeed, one of the original Heroes of the Lance is a male half-elf (human-dad, elf-mom, Child by Rape) named Tanis Half-Elven. He seems to have increased life-span, pointy ears, but no other benefits. Spends a fair amount of time sulking about how rejected he feels by both races (don't call him "Half-Man"!).
    • Krynn is also home to half-goblins and half-ogres, although little attention is paid to these.
    • Because humans, gnomes, dwarves and kender are all related^note the first gnomes were humans cursed with stunted forms and Science-Related Memetic Disorder by the forge god Reorx, and then a huge gnomish invasion force was mutated by a Chaos-fuelled Artifact of Doom, with half becoming the first dwarves and the other half becoming the first kender, it's possible for humans to hybridize with all three, though this is rare. Half-dwarves get the best of it, in that humans and hill dwarves are generally on good terms. Half-gnomes, on the other hand, suffer from the same insanity as their gnomish parents, making them either obsessive to the point of it being detrimental to their health or else too easily distracted to focus on anything. Half-kender, on the other hand, may be the angstiest race in all of Krynn, even surpassing the half-elves, who are frequently born through human men raping elven women, due to being torn between their human and kender instincts/desires (mainly the border-line kleptomanical curiosity of their kender side and the fact their human side actually gives them the ability to understand such concepts as "ownership" and "private property") and the fact that no other race on Krynn trusts them. The average human, elf, etc considers a half-kender to be a "stealth kender" you can't even realise is a kender and so realise you need to protect your stuff from them—and thusly folks are quick to turn on half-kender when they realise their origin.
    • No fewer than three half-kender have shown up in D&D novels; Tarli and Scounger from Dragonlance novels, and a female one in the Cloakmaster cycle for Spelljammer novels. She "picked up" stuff out of curiosity as kenders do, but wasn't too distracted to remember where and put it back after examining. All this was pulled so well that instead of being a Sue Bomb she ended up praised as one of the best sidekicks ever and fan-preferred Love Interest. Later she was able to concentrate long enough to learn psionics (which in AD&D era implied above-average Intelligence and impressive Wisdom score, whether the teacher is an ancient supra-genius slug or not).
    • Incidentally, this common origin means there's also a canonical race of Non Human Humanoid Hybrids in the setting, in the form of the Gully Dwarves — half-gnome, half-dwarves who are borderline mentally retarded (for example, they're completely incapable of counting past two). After seeing what they had begat, gnomes and dwarves vowed never to interbreed again, on pain of death; however, by this time, Gully Dwarves had become a viable race of their own.
  • Eberron: Half-elves have graduated into being a full-blown "race" in their own right, much like how people of mixed European and Indigenous descent are a distinct ethnic group in Latin America. Their earliest ancestors were human aristocrats and elven gold diggers looking for an inheritance from the short-lived humans (not knowing at the time that their species were mutually-fertile). Born into the aristocracy, these half-elves had an easier time marrying their own kind since noble marriages are typically limited to other nobles. Eventually they went on to become a true-breeding race and most modern half-elves are born to half-elven parents, with only a small minority coming from human/elf pairings. They have even developed two Dragonmarks, which are generally unique to specific bloodlines within specific races, thus further cementing their perceived status as race unto themselves apart from elves and humans. Half-elves (or Khoravar as they like to call themselves, because they originated on Khorvaire) can still interbreed with humans and elves, as well as with the Kalashtar.
  • Forgotten Realms:
    • The Realms have a radically different take on half-dwarf/half-humans — they're dwarves for all practical purposes, just dwarves with one parent who wasn't. This is actually somewhat encouraged by some shield dwarven communities that have figured this out, as breeding in human heritage doesn't seem to make the children much less dwarven, but it does help clear out a lot of the reproductive problems that have been picked up by the communities over millennia of accumulating inorganic poisons and that one period of rampant cloning. These "half-dwarves" can also alternatively be half-gnome or half-halfling as well.
    • Al-Qadim: Locals consider marriages between different creatures pretty normal as long as they are interfertile. This includes half-elves and half-orcs, but also it's specifically said that a proper Magically-Binding Contract allows a demihuman and a genie to have children.
  • Unearthed Arcana from 3rd edition has "bloodlines", with all kinds of magical ancestors from celestials, demons and devils, and elementals to dragons, giants and yuan-ti. All of them provide an assortment of advantages like skill bonuses, ability bonuses, bonus feats and spell-like abilities, etc.
  • That said, this trope is averted in Classic D&D, which has races as classes. An elf and a human can certainly start a family with each other if they wish, but the result of their union will be either an elf or a human.
• Exalted has lots of these, but with a slight twist: God-Bloods, Fae-Bloods, Demon-Bloods, Beastmen, and Ghost-Bloods are actually significantly weaker than the "normal" races available for play. They're a step above ordinary humans, sure, but the titular Exalted outclass them by far. Beastmen, by the way, are exactly what they sound like. Also a bit more realistic in terms of viable hybrids than most; humans can, under normal circumstances, only interbreed with beings made of Essence (like spirits and raksha) and with the Mountain Folk (an older species that humans were based off of). Breeding with actually non-human races (such as the Dragon Kings) is impossible without powerful magic. Even the breeding with animals generally requires one to be in the Wyld (which is also an environment where animals can breed with rocks).
• In Nomine: A celestial or ethereal spirit can potentially use the Songs of Fruition to have children with a mortal. This extremely rare and harshly persecuted by both Heaven and Hell, but these half-spirit humans nonetheless exist, and typically have a greater potential for gaining additional Forces and awareness of the Symphony than normal humans — although, sometimes, the child will be a monstrous, warped Nephallim or Gorgon.
• Pathfinder:
  • Sorcerers (innate magic users, as opposed to wizards who got their powers through study or warlock who got them through dark pacts) gain their powers from various supernatural forces breeding into their bloodline. The following is a current (early 2012) list of things which have created bloodlines for sorcerers: Aberrant (think Cthulhu Mythos-like monsters), Abyssal (Demons or worse), Accursed (Hags), Proteans (chaos spirits), Aquatic (anything from sea elves to deep ones), Arcane (plain ol' A Wizard Did It — and how!), Boreal (giant and troll kin ala Norse Myth), Celestial (heavenly creatures), Deep Earth (earth spirits), several different kinds of genies and all four Western elemental types, Draconic, Fey, Infernal (Devils), Maestro (some musical monster from trumpet-wielding angels to shoggoths), Orc, Rakshasa (evil spirits of Buddhist myth), Serpentine (your friendly reptoids), Shadow (another dimension), Starsoul (spacefarers), Storm (unknown elemental spirits), Undead, and Verdant (plants). It's probably better not to ask how some of those happened. There are even more bloodlines available from third party developers or for characters with unusual archetypes.
    • There's also no rule that says such a sorcerer can't also belong to a race that is already a half-human hybrid. A dhampir (half human, half vampire) sorcerer could have an Abyssal bloodline and the half-celestial template. Special Snowflake Syndrome can really run amok here if a GM allows it to.
    • Pathfinder Sorcerers can be either this, Lamarck Was Right or the result of a Mystical Pregnancy^note the Kobold bloodline is an exception to all of those, in that it is a Kobold-only bloodline that starts from the fact that all kobolds claim draconic heritage and then put a kobold-y twist on the bloodline. So the Undead bloodline, for example, can (thankfully) be as a result of a curse or an ancestor who turned himself into a Lich.
    • That said, the game does take it further than just Sorcerers. Human characters can be given a trait that basically lets them pick up genetic feats and traits from any of the Humanoid races in the game.
  • In terms of actual first-generation hybrids, half-elves (who usually look like an even mix of their parents, but can favor one species or the other in appearance) and half-orcs (who can look like anything from somewhat slim orcs to green-skinned humans with pronounced teeth, and some are so hideous they more closely resemble hags than anything) are core playable races. Half-celestials, half-fiends, dhampyrs (half-vampires), half-dragons and half-elementals are present as well. Finally, there’s the half-ogres, a.k.a. ogrekin, which unlike most other fantasy hybrids are visibly twisted, malformed beings, inevitably saddled with deformities like additional or withered limbs, conjoined twins, misshapen heads and so on, with the lingering genetic influence of the heavily inbred ogre progenitors ensuring that nothing descended from a half-ogre will ever look human again.
  • Mongrels, who exist in the regions around the Worldwound, are a subversion: they look like grotesque hybrids of humans and animals, and sport mutations like wings, animal limbs, scaly or furred skin, animalistic facial features, and so on. In truth, they are the descendants of Crusaders whose bodies were warped by exposure to the Abyssal energies of the Worldwound. The mutations leave many of them with broken or diseased bodies and they have short lifespans.
• Ponyfinder: "Satyrs" in this setting are the result of a human having a child with oine of several of the sapient quadrupedal animals from the setting. The result is a being who is human from the waist up and a bipedal non-human from the waist down, with extra traits like wings or horns depending on their precise ancestry. Explicitly compatible couplings include the myriad species of ponies, the purrsians (cats with wings), the ruminants (deer), and the krava (cows). Justified in that these sapient beasts all explicitly have origins as fey creatures, which means they are rooted a bit more in magic than in biology.
• All the same examples from Pathfinder naturally apply to Starfinder as well. It also notes that Half-Elves can arise from pairings with Ryphorians as well as Humans.
• The World of Darkness:
  • Changeling: The Dreaming featured kinain, changeling-human hybrids whose closest claim to fame was not driving fae sane. Changelings themselves were half-human hybrids, as they were the result of a fae soul merging with a human soul. The Dark Ages book contrasts changeling with fae by showing how... well, off some of the Good People could be.
  • Changeling: The Lost: While the changelings are, for the most part, sterile, other creatures in the setting can have kids with humans. Fetches, the impostors the Gentry leave behind when they take humans, can occasionally produce fetch-children (just a little bit odd) and fetch-spawn (evil incarnate). Incubi, likewise, can occasionally produce cambions, children who can see fae things and who have an innate connection to the world of dreams.
  • Demon: The Descent: Offspring are the children of a human-demon pairing, able to use some of their demonic parent's powers. Latents have a demon in the family tree, but aren't direct children. They lack any supernatural abilities, but if exposed to the right event, they can gain the abilities of an Offspring along with a Mark of the Supernatural.
  • Hunter: The Vigil features the Lucifuge, a Conspiracy made up of the six hundred and sixty six individuals on Earth at any one time who believe themselves to be children of pairings between humans and demons — if not blood relatives of the big guy himself — and have chosen to defy their heritage. Their powers, which lean towards the conjuring of Hellfire, summoning of imps, and a stare that makes you relive all your worst sins, definitely lend credence to that belief. Then there are "L'Enfant Diabolique", the Lucifuge's evil counterparts — they're the ones who chose to embrace their heritage...
  • Vampire: The Masquerade has dhampirs, the offspring of extremely thin-blooded vampires and humans.
  • Vampire: The Requiem: Half-vampires turn up in Night Horrors: Wicked Dead: Dampyr, the children of vampires and humans, walking curses on the Kindred. The presence of a Dampyr can utterly ruin a vampire's life, and the Dampyr may never realise what happened, because the effect they have on the Kindred is completely unconscious on their part.
  • Werewolf: The Forsaken and Werewolf: The Apocalypse:
    • Nearly every werewolf is the product of Interspecies Romance (or not romance, as the case may be), and all have some human — or in Apocalypse, normal wolf — in by two rungs of the family tree. In the Old World of Darkness, the natural result of a werewolf-werewolf mating is deformed and sterile, so werewolves had to cruise the bars or the woods to propagate their species. In the New World of Darkness, only werewolf-human mating produces living children, while a pair of werewolves bumping uglies end up with spiritual Ghost Children trying to kill the mother. Hybrids that couldn't transform became the Kinfolk and Wolf-blooded of the respective games.
    • Most of the Changing Breeds from Apocalypse can likewise trace back their origin to Interspecies Romance in the family tree. The exception is the Corax wereravens, who create more of their kind by bonding a spirit egg to a human or raven.

Strategy Games

• Warhammer 40,000:
  • Played with in a typically horrible fashion with genestealer hybrids, though in an unusual take the original Genestealer itself is never a parent — it infects another creature with its genetic material, and when that creature reproduces normally with another of its kind, the offspring will be part Genestealer.
  • Necron Pariahs are horrifying hybrids of Untouchable humans and Necron technology.
  • The idea of human/Eldar hybrids is something that flip-flops back and forth, Depending on the Writer. Old Rogue Trader fluff had a Space Marine Librarian who was hinted to be one, and one of the Black Library books, "The Chapter's Due" had a minor character, a Corsair leader who was rumoured in-universe to be half-Eldar. The newest Eldar/Dark Eldar fluff writer Phil Kelly seems to support the idea of such unions, although given the less-than-stellar relationship between the two races ^note the average Imperial official would likely execute you on the spot for even thinking about such vile heresies, and the fact that Eldar call us "mon'keigh" kind of says everything you need to know about their views on us, it's highly likely that one of them would not be a willing participant, especially if a Dark Eldar was involved.
  • The traitor Space Marine Typhus of the Death Guard gets his psyker abilities from having partial alien ancestry from the species that once ruled his home world Barbarus. This has since been retconned to him having ancestry from mutant warlords.
• Warhammer Fantasy: Averted for the most part with Chaos being responsible for just about all hybrid creatures (Beastmen, dragon ogres, Skaven...) rather than (un)natural reproduction.
  • Fimir females are completely sterile, the only way for the Fimir to increase their population is to kidnap some human women.
  • One book reveals that for all their devotion to Chaos and hatred for humanity, beastmen won't mate with human women.

Unsorted

• Citadel Of Blood: Raman Cronkevitch is described as a "demi-cronk". The "cronk" monster is never described in detail, but on the counters◊ from Citadel of Blood they're depicted as small, rotund, furry handless creatures, while the rules specify that a nauseating stench surrounds them at all times. Your guess is as good as ours...
• Nexus: The Infinite City: One of the many alternate dimensions that can be travelled is a fairly pleasant locale that is unique in that its own universal rules allows for two completely incompatible species, especially humans, to conceive a halfbreed offspring with minimum complications and maximum viability. Naturally it's a popular destination for interspecies honeymoons.

---