Generally, the characters retire from active adventuring when that happens. It's incredibly irresponsible for a pregnant woman to adventure, as well as bringing an infant along after that.
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Dwarf Fortress teaches us that carrying your baby in to battle increases the chances you come out alive, as the baby can take the fatal hits for you.
While there are no official rules, a few 3rd party products have discussed this. Sadly, they tend to be adult in nature since the rules are a subset of those used to get pregnant, if you catch my meaning.
It can lead to some interesting options for the next generation. One of my favorite characters was the child of two high level adventurers, and he was conceived and carried for a fair time on Mabarr, the plane of Shadow and Negative Energy in the Eberron setting. I made him a shadowcaster, with negative energy affinity, and a severe case of schizoid personality. But that's getting ahead of things.
For the genetics, remember that planetouched don't always have a pure line. They can show up to human parents (or actually, any race). This would also imply that one of the parents had lineage back to the outsider, which further implies planetouched can have nonplanetouched children. So presumably one of two things will happen - either the child will gain the outsider influence, and just be a sylph, regardless of parent races, or they won't gain the outsider influence, in which case it would essentially be the same as a human/half-elf hybrid. I'd say give it 50/50 on whether that makes it a full half-elf, or a human with some lingering elf traits/features.
As for pregnancy... I seem to recall a magic armor ability in those rules based on Bag of Holding enchantments that let the inside of armor hold more than the outside, and a spell that reduced the negative effects. Net result was a pregnant woman who suffered from no debilitating conditions, not even a change in balance from carrying the extra weight up front.
Likely the female half would take a hiatus from adventuring when she learned she was pregnant, until sometime after the child is born. At that point the child can be fostered to another family, usually a relative or close friend. The mother can then resume adventuring.
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Like others have stated, if you're looking for rules regarding conception and pregnancy, these only currently exist in 3PP 3.5 products. Also, as stated, let the buyer beware.
As for figuring out genetics, I would suggest using a punnet square to determine the possible outcomes. One parent is half-elf, so it could be represented by H(uman)E(lf); the other parent is sylph, which could be represented by H(uman)A(ir element.)
Running the square with HA down one side and HE down the other, you end up with 4 separate (and therefore equal opportunity) outcomes, each with an (obvious) 25% chance of occurrence: Human, Half-Elf, Sylph, and some sort of Air-Element/Elf hybrid. Depending on one's interpretation, this could also be a sylph, which would change the outcome percentages to 25% human, 25% half-elf, and 50% sylph.
In case it would come up (it hasn't yet,) gender options shouldn't deviate from 50/50 male/female.
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I'm running a Kingmaker campaign, and almost all of the PCs have eventually gotten themselves married. The female PCs have at one time or another gotten pregnant. As DM, I told the players that I'd let them decide when/if their PCs (or spouses, as appropriate) got pregnant, and I made it clear the point is NOT to punish them for having kids. I generally handle it like this:
"Okay, we've just wrapped up a chapter, and it looks like we're going to spend a while with downtime and doing Kingdom Turns. That means you won't be adventuring much for a bit. So, this is a good time, does anyone want to declare their character is getting pregnant?"
If they do, I note the month(s) when any births are expected so we can do the random rolls (male/female, small possibility of multiple births). Then, as DM, I make sure to do enough kingdom turns (i.e. take enough downtime) that the female PCs are no longer pregnant by the time I throw out the next adventure hook.
I'm running a Kingmaker campaign...
I have to remember this, it's a great idea. Thanks
Family-hood can be an interesting character trait. As Cintra posted, using it as a background in your campaign could make for a very good plot hook, protection-incentive, character-building trait.
(off-the-cuff here:)
Character Trait: Progeny
- You have one or more children. If they survive to young adulthood, they may inherit your possessions as your legacy when you retire or pass away. If they are of at least young-adult age, you may play them as characters. Progeny may inherit some of the reputation (good or bad) of either or both of their parents, as well as a sorcerous bloodline (if any).
I've dealt with in-game pregnancies in much the same way: The PCs take a year or so off, and the game resumes with the kids left at home with wet-nurse and a guardian (a relative and/or governess.)
If you want to go into more detail...
As much as the book was villified, the 3.5 OGL Book of Erotic Fantasy from 2003 was surprising tasteful and well-written. It included some decent rules about pregnancy and childbirth. It's out of print now, but you can find it on the secondary market. Paizo doesn't seem to stock it, but you can buy the PDF through RPGNow. (Honestly, the biggest complaint about this book is probably the artwork-- which was manipulated photography rather than painting or line art. I really didn't think it worked very well. Well, that and the return of the "Comeliness" attribute. Lame.)
As to what racial abilities a child with one sylph and one half-elf parent would have... That's a GM call. I don't like to detail every possible mixed-race combination. Generally, I assume that 'half-orc' or 'half-elf' PCs just mean a character of mixed ancestry, not necessarily a character with one human and one orc parent. Similarly with the 'planetouched' races: the character has outsider ancestry, but it may go back a while, and it may skip generations.
If this were my game, I'd just say that the offspring from a union between an half-elf and a sylph would be a human, half-elf, or sylph, as made most sense to the story the player and I wanted to tell!
I would just assume the child would be a sylph( outsider DNA is more potent?) that looks like a half-elf, kinda like how BoF describes tieflings from races other than humans. So the ball is in the players and Dms court.
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In our Kingmaker game, my character, the Queen, needed to provide heirs.
After searching everything, I settled on "The Book of Erotic Fantasy" (D&D3.0?), while it is an adult product, the conception & pregnancy rules are pretty good.
The conception rules cover the chance of pregnancy based on race and sex.
I believe all the core races are covered as well as most of the fey and common outsider types.
So yes, it covers half-elves & sylphs.
The pregnancy rules more or less split all pregnancies into 1st, 2nd, and 3rd trimesters.
They vary in length by the mothers(?) race.
No effect during 1st.
2nd = -1 STR, -1 DEX, +1 armor check penalty, movement reduced by 1/4.(I think)
3rd = -3 STR, -3 DEX, +3 armor check penalty, movement reduced by 1/2.(I think)
The Queen was the daughter of a twin, so we increased that possibility, then she got ahold of a "wishing well", so she tried a wish for triplets (this was in 1st).
I used the restrictions while adventuring during the 2nd.
Stayed at the castle during the 3rd, and a month after.
Used the Queen's cohort Paladin of Erastil husband to adventure with party.
Queen is a Rogue.
Other than having a Kingdom event;
Kidnap/Assassinate major PC during the birthing.
With 1st born daughter sparkles in sunshine and looks slightly feyish,
2nd born boy is an ugly baby,
and 3rd born kidnapped and taken back to First World by grimstalkers.
So everything came out OK.
Doing the pregnancy that way keeps it simple, NPCs would be even easier.
But for an adventurer I recommend doing it by trimester, not sure how long it would be for a sylph though.
Generally, the characters retire from active adventuring when that happens. It's incredibly irresponsible for a pregnant woman to adventure, as well as bringing an infant along after that.That assumes that "adventuring" is a profession. Depending on the scope of the game, she (or he) might not have a choice.
Child endangerment is not a theme I wish to explore at my table.
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Adventuring while pregnant is probably not ideal, but circumstances some times force it on people. A good fictional example is Jessica Atredies in Dune. She needs to run for her life when the Harkonens attack.
And GM forcing such circumstances on a pregnant PC is appropriate, provided the players are comfortable with this subject matter.
Going back to the Dune example, Alia Atreides becomes what she becomes because of what happens in vitro. I think plane touched-ness might be expressed in simularlly particular circumstances. Basically, the extra planar alles get expressed due to the extra planar enviroment/influence (Blood of Demons points to this with some of the tiefling variants). For example, a demon could attack a would be mother, not in order to kill, but to wound in such a way that would lead to a tiefling birth.
That's why most children of the plane touched would the race of the grandparents or the proper half whatevers. So the Slyph/half elf parents would probably produce a half elf or human, assuming the slyph is human descended.
I read the first post and was going to mention the Book of Erotic Fantasy, but then I saw that I already had... five years ago.
And then I realized that this thread was necro'd.
We do have canonical precedent for some people not suffering any penalty to themselves for adventuring while pregnant (although as noted, their upcoming children are at risk): Hill Giants.
I consider the chance 3 out of 30. Thus it's 1-2 on a D20 that pregnancy occurs. Note that if one of the possible parents is half orc that rises to 1-3 out of D20. With elves it's 1 out of 20.
So, if there is a place where time moves faster relatively, so you go there for seemingly 20 days, and come back older and with a kid who's now an adult. Or maybe members of your family who are not actively adventuring raise the kid. Or you hire an NPC nanny.