What variants/alternative options are there for half-elves?

Question

The 3.5e half-elf is underpowered; even WotC admits it.

The issue is, I want the Mark of Storm, which is exclusive to the half-elven d’Lyrandar family, one of Eberron’s Dragonmarked Houses. The Least Dragonmark feat’s prerequisite reads “Member of appropriate dragonmarked race and house,” (Eberron Campaign Setting pg. 56), and the “dragonmarked race[s] and house[s]” are listed in a table:

Dragonmarks

Mark	House	Race	Influence
…	…	…	…
Storm	Lyrandar	Half-elf	Windwrights Guild, Raincallers Guild
…	…	…	…

^{(Eberron Campaign Setting pg. 63)}

Thus, for the Mark of Storm, the Least Dragonmark feat has a requirement of “Race: Half-elf.”

Elves have traditionally been scorned by 3.5e optimizers too, but that’s mostly because the Constitution penalty sucks so much, and plenty of elven subraces avoid that. Some of those races are even fairly good. So it’s not terribly hard to optimize an elf character. But with half-elves, there seems to be far fewer options.

Thus, I am interested in any official expansions, variants, subraces, or whatever for half-elves. I am not looking for ways to “count as” a half-elf despite not being one—no shapechanging, polymorphing, no Racial Emulation feat, etc. I also don’t want to spend a feat or class level (I’d consider RHD, and I’m willing to listen about LA, though odds are very strong I’d not go with either). I’m really just looking for other half-elf races. The only ones I know of¹ are the forestlord half-elf and deepwyrm half-drow from Dragon Magic, both of which are extremely unlikely for a scion of House Lyrandar, considering how both dragons and elves reacted to the half-green-dragon elf Erandis d’Vol.

I am not interested in templates, even LA +0 templates, that I could legally apply to a half-elf. I’d been considering dragonborn, but Races of the Dragon explicitly states that dragonborn lose their dragonmarks and have to pick new feats, so that’s useless to me. I’m aware there are a few other LA +0 templates out there, but since I’m aware of them, they’re not what I’m asking about in this question.

1. _{Races of Faerûn discusses the half-aquatic-elf and the half-drow, but neither of these changes anything about their stats. (Turns out they do have differences, Races of Faerûn’s just laid out in an extremely confusing manner and I missed it. See J.Mini’s answer.)}

Answer 1

I know you've said you're uninterested in LA +0 templates, but I recommend at least investigating the racial variants found in Dragon 306, on page 60. The article is entitled "Racial Variants," and while they are nominally templates, they're in a grey space between a traditional template like Fiendish and a subrace like Wood Elf. Closer to the latter than the former, I would argue.

Each of the six variants—Aquatic, Arctic, Deep, Desert, Magic-Blooded, and Wild—has fleshed out sections on Personality, Physical Description, Relations, Alignment, Lands, Religion, and Adventurers, just as though it were a race in the Player's Handbook, and indeed they can only be applied to the base races found in the PHB.

I dismissed them as cheesy Dragon material for a number of years, familiar with them only in various lists of playable templates or from handbooks. But having actually read the article, I think they're quite neat, and pretty moderate. The power level of LA +0 races is highly disparate, with most of the PHB races (with the notable exception of Humans) close to the bottom of that range.

An Arctic Half-Orc (from Dragon 306), who gets +2 Con and -2 Cha over a regular Half-Orc, and minor frost-themed bonuses, is still probably worse than a Water Orc (from Unearthed Arcana), and a Magic-Blooded Halfling or what have you is probably worse than a Lesser Aasimar (Players Guide to Faerûn), and so forth. I do love the infamous all-planetouched party, but if you're in a campaign that permits the more powerful LA +0 races, it can be nice to add a little boost to the traditional PHB races, so it feels less like you're missing out on stats by playing one of them.

Many of the best ones even make some sense in this case. The seat of House Lyrandar, Stormhome, uses magic to maintain a temperate climate despite being so far north, but it might be plausible for an Arctic Half-Elf to have grown up outside those weather magics and still be a member of House Lyrandar. Magic-Blooded could be from anything, really (perhaps even those aforementioned weather magics). You could even do Aquatic—Stormhome is an island, after all. I'm sure someone better versed in Eberron could come up with better backstory, but the point is that many of the variants are pretty lore-friendly. It's not like trying to play a Lesser Fey'ri (plausibly a half-elf lore-wise, though definitely not a Half-Elf rules-wise) in Eberron.

Basically, though the racial variants in Dragon 306 are called templates, I think it's much better to view them akin to the environmental variants found in Unearthed Arcana, and given that there don't appear to have been satisfactory answers so far, it's worth giving Dragon 306 some consideration.

Answer 2

I don't know of any half-elf variants that are any less bad than regular half-elves.

Here are a couple more thoroughly underwhelming options, both from Unearthed Arcana:

• Fire half-elves: Bonus to attack rolls and penalty to saving throws against water-based creatures, plus normal half-elf traits.
• Jungle half-elves: Replace the skill bonuses with equivalent ones to Bluff and Sense Motive.

I'm sure you're just as excited about these as you are about the equally useless ones mentioned in your footnote.

Answer 3

Probably not applicable to your case, but from checking my entire collection, I've got these:

• The default in the PHB.
• Aquatic Half-Elf: From the Stormwrack campaign setting. Trades their Diplomacy and Gather Information bonuses for some very good swimming bonuses. Also gets a penalty for not seeing the sea. This might be the worst Half-Elf ever. They're also printed in Races of Faerûn under the name "Half-aquatic elves". At a skim, it looks to me that the Faerûn version doesn't lose any skills, so it's strictly better than that of Stormwrack.
• The five Environmental Half-Elves from Unearthed Arcana: Aquatic (not the same as the above), Arctic, Desert, Fire, and Jungle. I'd go in to detail, but they're in the SRD.
• Forestlord Half-Elves from Dragon Magic: Described in the same place as their full Elf version and comes with essentially the same penalties. You've already found these.
• Drow of the Underdark has the Half-Drow race and claims to supersede the version of them that appears in Races of Faerûn. They're not much different and you've excluded these in your question, so I won't go in to detail.

As a final place to look, there's always the Races of [...] books. I've checked them and found nothing else. You appear to have done the same.

I think there's also a Dark Sun Half-Elf of some sort, but I don't own those books. To my surprise, there definitely aren't any Half-Elves in Frostburn or Sandstorm. Between us, I think that covers everything in 3.5e. Just in case, I also checked my 3e collection, and I found nothing new. There's a Forgotten Realms 3e Half-Elf, but its only differences is its languages.

Answer 4

In the published books, as well as Dragon Magazine (or Dragon, later) only the half-elves you mention are to be found for Dungeons and Dragons 3rd ed. and its Revised 3.5 ed. They have to be based on existing elves, kinda by definition, and that makes even some elves just better, or at least more flavorful, options. In fact, the only half-elf specific content I've found in Dragon Magazine was 'The Complete Half-elf' article from 1995's issue 214, pp 10-15, which provided multi-class kits for half-elves to take. AD&D 2e kits, that is.

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In previous editions of D&D, half-elves were versatile; they had the most multi-classing options, were in fact the only race able to multi class as clerics and druids, and barring humans, they could attain the highest levels in the most classes.

In D&D 3rd ed., the multi-class/dual-class system from previous editions was significantly altered, as was the level and XP system. All characters, regardless of race had the same capacities and so the half-elf was less special. In D&D 3/3.5, the elf is as versatile, has the same potential, and can adjust his stats to sometimes benefit classes and builds... and the half-elf? Well, he just doesn't bring any penalties.

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Perhaps there are some non-racial substitution levels, or maybe consider using the optional 'half-human' rules from Races of Destiny 150 to look at the elf or human substitution levels...