half elves; just slightly underpowered?


Homebrew and House Rules

Shadow Lodge

I was looking at making a new character for pfs and for so role playing reasons I felt it would be good if it were a half elf. But looking through the class guides for ideas I noticed a trend. The race, other than for Summoners usually came up as "green" option, meaning you could make a pretty good whatever but it was never the first choice. Looking at alternate race traits and all of them seemed lackluster in comparison to what I saw for other races and in many cases humans could do something similar only better. Particularly glaring was the lack of traits that replaced multitalented and were good.

Don't get me wrong, they weren't 3.5 bad (when the race just plain sucked) but there was nothing that made me go wow either. Finally, assimars seem to be similar enough from a rp standpoint that they fill many of the same character backgrounds while being straight out superior.

So, is this just me or are half elves being squeezed out both mechanically and background wise?


Half Elves have their strong points just like any other race.

Do you want to use an Exotic Weapon? Then Half-Elf is strictly better than Human barring your interest in 1 more skill point per level.

Half-Elves can take the favored class bonuses from either.

Keen Senses rocks.


If you want Skill Focus or Exotic Weapon Proficiency the Half-Elf is basically a Human with Low-Light Vision (read: strictly better).

There's also Paragon Surge but that's on a different level entirely.


Arachnofiend wrote:

If you want Skill Focus or Exotic Weapon Proficiency the Half-Elf is basically a Human with Low-Light Vision (read: strictly better).

There's also Paragon Surge but that's on a different level entirely.

Agreed, if your human is going to take EWP or Skill Focus at level 1 anyway, you might as well give him slightly pointy ears for slight benefits. That is the role of the hlaf-elf.


It really depends on what you want to do. I've had excellent success playing a Half-Elf rogue with proficiency in the Aldori Dueling Sword and the Aldori Cloakmaster trait; as a rogue, the extra skill points are just excessive, and the bonuses to perception and will save are hugely valuable.


- Half-elves can take the alternate racial trait that lets them take an arcane caster class as favoured class as martials. By doing so they can use magic items as if they were level 1 in the chosen arcane casting class.
- Because they count as Elf and Human they can choose both kinds of racial feats, favoured class bonuses, traits, archetypes.
- They are immune to ghoul paralysis like full elves
- They get paragon surge

For many reasons they are good for a variety of builds. If not best.


Oh, and the double favored class option is also pretty nice.


If you're going for roleplaying reasons and you find green options in those guides, that's good. Infact, if you min-max and you see a green option in those guides, you consider it.

They have some great stuff, as mentioned above. I don't see how you could deem them as "underpowered" when they mostly come up as green, aka a good choice.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Homebrew and House Rules / half elves; just slightly underpowered? All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Homebrew and House Rules