Question:

i thought Drow and Surface elves couldnt mate?

Apparently they can, I also looked into this myself a while back for a character idea I had, and found mention of a half drow half wood elf merc, also when I was talking to the Jearle bunch a while back it was brought up, personal I to not see any reason why its not possibale between the two subraces.

It's completely possible, but Drow blood is "dominant" when the two mate. 99/100 times, the child looks completely Drow, or at least, has dark/black skin rather than any hue of a surface elf.

As faithless said drow blood is a lot more potent probably because of the demon heretige in there (See wendonai). So a union between drow and darthiiri would end up with a half-drow with quite drow features (I say half drow because I do belive they dont get any of the spell like abilities or the like).
In addition if a half-drow and a drow mate the drow blood overpowers the rest and a full drow is produced.

i'm not wishing to dispute what's been decided on here and am happy to go along with it

i am more just curious as to the canon on it

would have thought there might be quite a few drow/elf hybrids around but there is no template for it and no way to really create one (i am not asking the question because i am lookiing to create one btw)

there might be loads of elf/drow Eilstraee worshippers?

Half Drows are on page 62 of Races of Faerun book but it presumes that the other half is human and not elf. I don't know if half elf/half drows are different than half human/half drows.

farinal wrote:

Half Drows are on page 62 of Races of Faerun book but it presumes that the other half is human and not elf. I don't know if half elf/half drows are different than half human/half drows.

yes its half elf/half drows i am meaning

well i presume they would. they would be shorter than surface elves for starter

i dont see anything about them in the normal books, just where drow have mated with humans

i dont see anything that they can't mate either, my previous thinking on that may have come from rule on an old NWN1 server like Myth Drannor

its a massively interesting subject in drow lore but there is nothing i can see on the subject

Well probably because it is a very, very rare case. Even more rare than a drow and human mating, which is also very rare. The main difference would be lifespan I think. Half Elf/Half Drow would live longer, just like a normal elf/drow than a Half Human/Half Drow.

but why is it so rare?

among Eilstraee followers it might be very common


also if demon blood is so dominant why arent half human drow completely black?

Perhaps humans do not merge with the 'demon blood' as well physiologically, although lore seems to think they get the evil pretty handily.

Anyway obviously there ARE a lot of drow with "faerie" blood running around, the drow side is just dominant so you have no idea and they just seem like regular drow.

I've read somewhere before that elves breed purely in general. For example, I haven't read lore of any "half-wood elf, half-moon elf" or any type of hybrid races between the various elf sub-races, so presumably elves breed pure (that is, if elf X and elf Y mate, the result would be either X or Y, not a hybrid). I would guess the same applies here, if a drow and some other type of elf of type X mate, it would result in either a pure drow or a pure elf of type X.

Half-drow and half-elf specifically refers to the result of drow/human and elf/human breeding respectively.

I don't really have a source for this, but this is what I remember reading in the past.

If that's the case then the child of a drow and an elf would be drow because of the "stronger blood" thing.

In the Drizzt novels they mention it. And you're correct. They are generally pure drow in appearance, but they suggest that the eye colors other than red reflect some elven heritage... Such as his lavender eyes.

MustangSVT wrote:

I've read somewhere before that elves breed purely in general. For example, I haven't read lore of any "half-wood elf, half-moon elf" or any type of hybrid races between the various elf sub-races, so presumably elves breed pure (that is, if elf X and elf Y mate, the result would be either X or Y, not a hybrid). I would guess the same applies here, if a drow and some other type of elf of type X mate, it would result in either a pure drow or a pure elf of type X.

Half-drow and half-elf specifically refers to the result of drow/human and elf/human breeding respectively.

I don't really have a source for this, but this is what I remember reading in the past.

that actually does make the most sense, there really is no FR published canon sourcebook on half elf /half drow and that seems to provide the best explanation and works well alongside the no "half-wood elf, half-moon elf" that you mention.
Half drow and half elf like you say is always in regard to half human


its in a few places when you google it: http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&safe=off&sclient=psy-ab&q=%22forgotten+realms%22+%22elves+breed+true%22&oq=%22forgotten+realms%22+%22elves+breed+true%22&gs_l=hp.3...1719.17214.0.17416.45.41.3.0.0.2.896.11417.1j12j10j6j3j2j3.37.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1.Q4gkl4r01Kc&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=8452a943ad72eb32&bpcl=35466521&biw=1318&bih=902