D&D 5E 30 speed for all! Halflings, Gnomes, Dwarves were feeling left behind?

[Obryn]

I'm saying that Tolkien took real life halflings with which he was familiar with, at least on principle, and imagined an entire race of them, and what they might be like. He took something that exists in reality, and modified it to his story.

I suggest you look up "hobbits" next. And then "snergs". Because seriously, that's not the inspiration.

Giving halflings the same speed as humans is patronizing and offensive to me. It's anti-intellectual, has no basis in either reality OR fantasy, and I consider it not only an insult to D&D trying to assign reasonable values to such things like racial average speeds, but also to its players' intelligence. I find it insulting to consider playing a game where halflings, dwarves, and gnomes walk as quickly as humans, on the basis of communistic / socialistic everybody must be given a level playing field, because otherwise life is unfair and we can't have that.

Dude, I think you're maybe reading a bit much into this If we are talking about socialism all of a sudden.

 

[tsadkiel]

The term halfling exists and was used to describe dwarfism, where do you think Tolkien got the idea? He didn't invent the term.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=halfling

Be sure that you are, you know, actually correct, before calling someone else incorrect, when a 2 second google search could easily prove you 100% dead wrong..As for the rest of your post, I didn't take the 30 seconds it would take to read it, because you didn't even take the 2 seconds it took me to find proof that "halfling" predates Tolkien by two centuries.

You may want to try that google search again - by my reading, the archaic term "halfling" refers to someone half grown and still growing - a boy, in other words. I can find absolutely nothing connecting the word to dwarfism. Your link certainly makes no such connection, and neither does this one:

http://www.finedictionary.com/Halfling.html

 

[Wyckedemus]

I'm saying that Tolkien took real life halflings with which he was familiar with, at least on principle, and imagined an entire race of them, and what they might be like. He took something that exists in reality, and modified it to his story. The rational basis for comparison between "regular" human movement rate and that of a dwarf, must either be based on reality, or on your own opinion. And if you base your opinions on analogs in real life, then you would probably conclude that dwarfs, gnomes, and halflings, should move slower than humans and elves.

The actual thing that's silly here is imagining the speed of leg motion of someone 3 feet tall compared to a 6 foot tall person, running with the same speed. That's comical, and actually quite offensive.

Giving halflings the same speed as humans is patronizing and offensive to me. It's anti-intellectual, has no basis in either reality OR fantasy, and I consider it not only an insult to D&D trying to assign reasonable values to such things like racial average speeds, but also to its players' intelligence. I find it insulting to consider playing a game where halflings, dwarves, and gnomes walk as quickly as humans, on the basis of communistic / socialistic everybody must be given a level playing field, because otherwise life is unfair and we can't have that. We can't recognize that. We can't admit that there are those with advantages and disadvantages, and that not everyone is created equal.

Because that would make D&D a game suitable for adults, instead of children.

Wow, Gorgoroth. You're really digging yourself in on this one. Read the room.

Halflings, Gnomes, and Dwarves are fantasy races created by fantasy gods in fantasy worlds, none of which really exist. They have magic and mysterious traits that cannot be defined in our real world. Darkvision, Lucky, Natural Illusionist, Stonecunning, among other traits. In a fantasy setting, these races are able to be defined according to the needs of the world, story, and the rules. If not game rules, then the rules of the divinities that crafted their beloved peoples.

There is nothing wrong with assuming that halflings are a spry race that take more steps with less effort and are able keep up the same pace as humans. It can be easily explained/justified that they were created with such boundless energy, or they evolved to suit their needs in a world populated by human-sized predators. Heck, one could justify that they need to eat a lot to support their high metabolism. Yay halfling foodie justification!.

It could easily be justified that while Dwarves may have to take more steps to keep up with a human's strides, they are able to because they have a robust stamina and just don't get tired as easily as a human.

Heck, a human can easily be 4 feet tall or 7 feet tall. In the real world, those people have different speeds. But in the game their speed is 30 feet because they are humans.

The designers gave Goblins and Kobolds speed 30 feet a while back now. So if there is a belief that most "smaller" races should be similar in speed, do we reduce the speed of the goblins and kobolds? Or bring the PC races up to par? I know what makes sense for player equitability.

It just makes sense to give these races a speed of 30, rather than try to justify all the penalties that smaller people "should" have.

If we keep them slow due to "justifying" penalties for smaller races, should we also reduce their space on the battlefield so they don't take up a 5-ft. square? Do we reduce their reach? Strength? Weapon size? With smaller heads/brains should they be less intelligent? Where does it stop?

Why not accept the fantasy? Accept that races can be defined more by the difference of their positive traits than any need to impose severe limitations on them.

... in my opinion.

 

[Wyckedemus]

You may want to try that google search again - by my reading, the archaic term "halfling" refers to someone half grown and still growing - a boy, in other words. I can find absolutely nothing connecting the word to dwarfism. Your link certainly makes no such connection, and neither does this one:

http://www.finedictionary.com/Halfling.html

That is an interesting point, Tsadkiel.

... in my opinion.

 

[Henry]

First of all, I'd like to say i'm surprised this has gone on for 16 pages+, but not really.

Second, by the links that herrozerro originally posted, a D&D halfling DOES have the edge, pound for poind, over a human. In 3e, the height, weigt, and carrying capciy tables makes it clear that a human being of average weight, heigt, and strength can only lift about 66% of his body weight over his head; the halfling, on the other hand, can lift almost DOUBLE his body weight in a dead lift over his head! (Str 8 halfling of avg build can max lift 60 lbs, and he weighs about 35!)
It gets even more pronounce the stronger the halfling is. An average halfling, unlike a human, could do one handed chinups effortlessly.

What does this tell us? That a halfling has a denser muscle to mass ratio than humans, and the articles' points about sprinting and body types is certainly plausible enough to justify equivalent movement rates.

On the more practical, "gamist" side of things, I cannot COUNT the number of times my players or I have accidentally pushed halfling PCs or NPCs 6 squares and had to readjust, or just plain forgot until 10 minutes later. If something that is perfectly justifiable in-game, makes the game easier to play at the table, and makes very little difference in play, I say GOOD FOR THEM! Roll with it!

 

[Hussar]

I have to admit that I take a pragmatic view on this sort of thing. How often is this actually going to matter? The only time this will come up is when a small character actually moves six squares instead of five.

How often is this going to come up? Is it going to come up so often that the difference is notable, or is it more likely that groups are like Henry's above and forget the niggling details and get the rule wrong often enough that user error gives you more inaccuracy than the actual rule gains?a

To me, this is like the 11 counting in 4e. Yes, I know, absolutely, that it is less accurate to do it this way. Totally agree. But, the gains in accuracy for 11 were, in my experience anyway, pretty much completely lost by the user errors. After they announced the 11 counting for 4e, I actually started keeping a record of how often we counted wrong using 11 and it was pretty much every single round of combat. Certainly error occurred every single combat at the very least. The second someone ran, or moved their full movement even, or counted range or area of effect, we had errors.

So, what's the point of having this great, accurate rule if it gets applied incorrectly so often? And I look at this the same way. Yes, I know that YOUR group is a paragon of calculation and never, ever makes a mistake when counting squares, but, I know that my group certainly isn't and making a single ruling would mean that while we lose a bit of accuracy, overall, it's not going to have any effect on the game for us.

 

[Gorgoroth]

Yan, check out the poll status, looks like twice as many people want it to be 25 than 30.

I don't care which type of argument wins, or how it does so (popularity or logic or tradition), so long they are made aware of this.

Thanks Enworld, for agreeing with me. I mean thank yourselves, of course, for being reasonable, but collectively we can save D&D Next if we put our minds together. It might shock some of you but I'm actually doing this for the good of the game, not for acrimony or just to argue. I only argue to win something concrete, otherwise that would be useless.

This week's L&L is more good stuff, but hopefully we can get all these bugs sorted out before the game goes to the printing presses and we can get a set of core rules qui ont de l'allure.

 

[Wulfgar76]

Yan, check out the poll status, looks like twice as many people want it to be 25 than 30.

I'm inclined to think you made up 20 sock-puppets just so you could skew the results of your own ridiculous poll.

Seriously, nobody cares about this non-issue.

 

[Derren]

Seriously, nobody cares about this non-issue.

Then why so angry when you do not care?

 

[keterys]

At first, part of me went "Well, sure, of course halflings should be slower" then next I went "Then again, why should I actually care. It doesn't make enough of a difference and I'd rather focus on more interesting meaty differences between the races", but finally I decided to weigh in at "same as humans" for a pretty simple reason:

It makes it easier to play the game. Especially without a tactical map, where you can just assume that people can roughly get to the same places as each other without tracking who has a +/-5 speed difference.

If I needed to justify it to myself, I'd think about my Corgi with her 3" legs who can ZOOM along the ground, or any number of children I know who can easily outdistance me despite me being taller. Good enough.