Interspecies Romance/Tabletop Games/Dungeons & Dragons

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Where would we be without Dungeons & Dragons and it's half-whatevers? In fact, since there's a Half-Human Hybrid for pretty much everything in the Monster Manual (although it's commonly implied that romance wasn't involved with the half-monsters), we've given D&D it's own section.

  • Mommy, where do half-elves come from?
    • In the Basic editions of D&D where elves were a class rather than a race, Interspecies Romance between a human and an elf typically resulted in either a human or an elf, much like in Tolkien's world.
    • Eberron gives a very reasonable explanation to why half-elves are a race, and lays down specific rules for half-elves and their offspring (half-elves breed true, elves and half-elves always have half-elf children, and a half-elf/human pairing has an equal chance of producing a half-elf or human). When the elves first started trading with humans, they realized that humans were very short-lived and could die in a matter of decades. Some elves decided it would be good business to marry wealthy human merchants, enjoy the relationship for a few decades, and then inherit sizeable holdings. It didn't even occur to the elves that half-human/half-elf offspring were viable, and when half-human children started being born the elvish nation restricted trade and closed its borders out of fear. However, all of the newly born half-elves were born into rich families, and most of the elven parents stayed around to raise their children, so half-elves came to occupy a nice section of upper/middle-class society in Khorvaire and make "Khorvar" villages on their ancestral land holdings.
    • In the Planescape setting, half-elf PCs who do not start out as "Clueless" Primes are the offspring of Prime elves and Planar humans, as if half-elves didn't have "issues" enough!
  • Daddy, where do half-orcs come from?
    • Many sources have presented them using the Child by Rape scenario, but not always. And in some cases where it is, the father is the human side.
    • At least some stories do show half-orcs that came from consenting parents. The Planescape setting had at least one half-orc character whose parents were a genuinely loving human/orc couple (male human, female orc). There was also the Dungeon Adventures module "Rudwilla's Stew" where the villains were three half-orcs and their human mother, who was a moderately powerful wizard. One of the brothers kept the skull of their father in a trunk in his bedroom, but no clue other than that was given as to how he was killed.
    • In Planescape, Factol Lhar of the Bleak Cabal is a half-orc whose parents were a married but impoverished couple, who abandoned him at the Gatehouse when he was 12; his mother had become pregnant a second time and they could not support two children. Clearly, this was at least one reason why Lhar embraced the nihilistic philosophy of the Bleak Cabal enough to eventually become its leader.
    • In fact, orcs likely have the most unstable genetic structure of all humanoid beings. One source claims that can crossbreed with almost any humanoid race except for elves, and have done so with goblins, dwarves, and gnomes, as well as humans. Two well-known half-orc species that don't involve a human parent are orogs (which is the result of male orc and a female ogre, and somehow smarter than its parents and much more disciplined than either) and an ogrillion (a rarer creature that occurs with the same two species, but the genders of the parents reversed; more stupid than both parents and, somehow, armored).
  • Derro, grimlocks, kuo-toa, and all Gith subraces are results of slave breeding by illithids, and those are the ones we know about. Illithid experiments have created a lot of bad things.
  • D&D3+ also features, as templates, half-celestials, half-dragons, half-elementals, half-fey, half-fiends, half-janni, half-minotaurs, half-ogres, half-trolls (which can be anything from half-human to half-griffin to half-stegosaurus), half-vampires, and even half-golems and half-illithids (though at least those last ones thankfully don't involve sex).
    • Thankfully? The process that can produce a half-illithid is worse then sex.
  • "'Half-dragon' is an inherited template that can be added to any living, corporeal creature." Oozes are "living, corporeal creatures", which makes the Half-Black-Dragon Gelatinous Cube a popular joke monster.
  • Going further still, aasimar (celestial), chaonds (chaos), draconics, genasi (elemental), tieflings (fiendish), and zenythri (law), among others, are what happen when some of those half-thingies go around and do it with "normal" people.
  • There are also "Heritage" feats and a "Bloodline" option, for adding special powers based on unusual ancestry, including celestial, fiendish, fey, vampire and illithid, among too many others to list.
  • In fact, it was implied that humanoid sorcerers have some draconic ancestry, as sorcery is how the dragons use magic - and they're pretty much the oldest race, outside of celestials and fiends - as well as explicitly stated that dragons can mate with Anything That Moves. Which fits well with their high Charisma and shapeshifting abilities. Nowadays it's implied that sorcerers have a touch of magical blood, but this can be from dragons, angels or demons, with different effects depending on which.
  • D&D was so bad about everything mating with everything else that the infamous third-party Sourcebook, Book of Erotic Fantasy, featured a chart explaining which creatures are compatible with which other creatures. It did have some interesting things in it, like prostitute prestige classes and cloud giants mating with sprites.
  • Dragonlance is not immune from this trope: the Dragonlance setting features 'Gully Dwarves', allegedly the offspring of gnomes and dwarves. Aside from being a strange combination, Gully Dwarves are incredibly stupid creatures, depicted as being totally incapable of counting higher than two. Those that can count higher than two tend to lick beer from tavern floors.
  • The changeling race, from the Eberron campaign setting of Dungeons & Dragons, are theorized to be descended from the viable offspring of humans and dopplegangers coupling, though this is unconfirmed (various factions have their own varying theories about why, exactly, changelings exist).
    • Monster Manual III details non-Eberron changelings and explicitly states they are descended from dopplegangers.
  • Note that in Standard D&D this is explicitly not the case: Dopplegangers are a One-Gender Race that breed with other races, their children turn into Dopplegangers at puberty.
  • Shifters or "beastkin" are similarly referred to as being a "mixed race" of lycanthropes and humans, although this, too, is unconfirmed and fiercely denied by shifters who belong to the anti-lycanthropic Church of the Silver Flame. (Such shifters insist that they existed first and lycanthropes are an unholy union of humans and shifters.)
    • The Fourth Edition Monster Manual and Player's Handbook 2 do make this the default canon explanation how the shifter race(s) came to be; longtooth shifters are descended from werewolves, razorclaw shifters from weretigers. Both are legitimate choices for player characters.
  • Forgotten Realms even has specific breeds of tieflings based on their ancestry - specifically, the fey'ri (elf-demon crosses) and tanarrukks (orc-demon crosses).
    • Acording to Dwarves Deep, humans, gnomes and halflings are cross-fertile with dwarves. And it's not just a theory, but accepted practice among the Shield Dwarves: dwarves' fertility is dangerously low (due to exposure to nonorganic poisons, later The Spawned taint was added) and the quarter-bloods will be proper dwarves.
    • Dwarf-elf pairs did exist too, but mostly in Ye Goode Olde Days of Ardeep and Earlann, or at least Myth Drannor. Which was named so after Drannor Whitethistle, who married the dwarf lady Konora Onyxhelm. Their kid Labrad became one of the first settlers in founding Cormanthor and apparently combined orderly hard-working side with wood-loving one, considering he's known as "the First Gardener". Another dwelf is known as a runecarver and archmage.
    • Elminster has quite a few children; his daughter Narnra Shalace (from the apt-titled novel Elminster's Daughter) was the result of his affair with a female song dragon, who like most intelligent dragons, can take human form.
    • Drizzt Do'Urden (drow) and his human wife Cattie-brie, a relationship far too long and detailed to put down here, so read about it here.
  • The tendency for humans to mate with other things was so common that eventually a race was created in D&D called the "mongrelfolk," supposedly a lowest-common-denominator mish-mash of basically all humanoid races.
  • Then there is the tauric template. Not happy with centaurs? Pick a humanoid and a creature with four or more legs and mash 'em up. Just try not to think about how they came to be. (Thankfully, the answer is usually "magic".)
  • Mechanatrixes, from humans and extraplanar clockwork outsiders like Inevitables. Born as cyborgs. From a living being and a magical robot.
  • Although the Squickiest race is quite probably the Wildren, a race in the 3.5 edition Planar Handbook that are descended from crossbreeds of dwarves aaaaannnd (wait for it)... badgers. Yes, badgers. Admittedly, they were near-sentient celestial badgers that had quite possibly previously been dwarves because of the way that their native plane works, but still. You may find that the best way to gouge out your mind's eye is to ram a tuning fork up your nostrils.
    • They've got some competition from the elf/giant eagle crossbreeds, brought into being by elf druids who studies for years in order to learn how to change into giant eagles... then promptly used that power for nookie.
  • Maybe, but remember half-orc/half-elf are still taboo (strange thing since orc and elf in D&D are from Tolkien, who described orcs as tainted elves...).
  • Elf/dragon hybrids, although perfectly feasible (with shapechanging assistance) under 3E rules, are such an unthinkable taboo to both species in the Eberron setting that producing one got the Death-dragonmarked elven lineage of Vol exterminated. The hybrid still exists, but only as a lich.
  • Duthka'gith, anyone?!
    • For non Planescapeers, hybrids of Red Dragon and Githyanki, deliberately bred by the Lich-Queen Vlaakith.
  • According to Dragon (magazine) #385, human royals have been known to accept Glee-Born, dragonborn with a more jovial, fun-loving nature than is normal for their taciturn race, as courtesans. Dragonborn, by the by, are humanoid in form, but have four fingers and three toes to a hand/foot (all of which are tipped with big, but blunt, claws), have scales for skin, "dreadlocks" for hair (actually a specialized form of scale), blunt-muzzled reptilian heads, fin-like ears, and grow close to seven feet tall. And typically have physically proportions like dwarves... meaning that some dragonborn women are bigger and buffer than most human men. Of course, there are still relatively slender and feminine dragonborn, but still.
  • Al-Qadim, being quasi-Arabic setting, has polygamy limited by tradition to four wives. That being Al-Qadim, this number is justified by the legend about the first sha'ir, who had four genie wives -- one per element. Marriages between a mortal and a genie are not quite stuff of legends, though of course rare and many are troublesome -- given how capricious and powerful genies are, few can hope to hold one's interest for long, let alone be a more or less equal match. Mortals of Zakhara are immune to Fantastic Racism, so romance between humanoids happens now and again, though rare except human-elf and human-orc pairs -- they are known to be inter-fertile, so it's much less of a big deal.
  • While it doesn't get a lot of mention, the novels for the Dragonlance setting admit outright that humans can cross-breed with just about any of the humanoid races. Not only is a half-elf one of the main characters of the first trilogy, but several mentions have been made of half-kender, and at least one half-ogre, half-dwarf, half-goblin and half-gnome has each turned up over the course of the novels.
  • One example of this Trope that ended very badly is part of the backstory of the Dungeon #44 module "Train of Events". One of the villains is a Lamia Noble who once fell in love with, married, and even had a child with a human male. (The monstrous equivalent of a she-wolf falling in love with a male sheep, at least from the typical lamia's point of view.) Problem is, she used her shapechanging ability to pose as human almost all the time, and one day he saw her in her true form. He was both repulsed and terrified, and she became enraged at such a reaction. (As the text states, "after all the years of giving up raw human flesh for boring roast beef, this is how he treated her?") In her rage, she killed him by shoving him out a third floor window, and fled. Her ultimate goal in the story is to find and reclaim her son with the aid of factions of derro and duergar. There's even a portrait of her son in her private quarters, placed for the DM to use as a Sequel Hook.
  • Ahem, Drow. They are known to hold rituals to summon demons simply for horrid orgies, simply to appease their dark goddess or prove how tough they are, and it is not uncommon for prisoners of the drow to be "invited" to these rituals. The "guests" used as Human Sacrifice for the actual summoning ritual are the lucky ones.
    • One of the worst examples of this is how a Draegoloth is conceived. This special type of half-fiend is the result of an unholy ritual conducted by a drow priestess where she lets a glabrezu (that would be this thing) have its way with her. Assuming she survives the initial ritual (demons tend to play rough), is tough enough to both carry the child to term and survive the birth (most do not) simply being able to bear this child puts her in a privileged status among Lolth's clergy, not to mention the benefits of being mom to a demon that makes an obscenely powerful engine of destruction. Volo's Guide to Monsters states that while the odds of survival are slim, some drow - being depraved creatures always trying to win Lolth's favor in their Social Darwinist society - consider it worth the risk.
  • Halfling mythology has a legend of a female halfling who was something of a slut and a bigamist with three husbands, a dwarf, elf, and gnome. Loyalty towards one's family and spouse are considered important virtues for halflings, so as a result, the gods put a curse on her, so that her children would be of a new species that embodied the negative qualities of all four races. This new species was humans. And yes, this is a story in canon halfling mythology; while the veracity of the myth is as debatable as any myths, most would admit that if true, it would explain a lot.
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