D&D 5E What is the appeal of the weird fantasy races?

[Crimson Longinus]

Not to me, apart from being little guys and living in burrows, and even that is a Tolkienism that didn’t really carry over to D&D. The earth association is more dwarflike and the nature association and illusion magic is more elflike. Though, that’s forest gnomes specifically, whereas rock gnomes double down on the earth association and add in crafting, which makes them even more like dwarves.

Forest gnomes have a lot of conceptual overlap with halflings. Halflings and gnomes could easily be combined into one species with several cultures without anything valuable being lost.

 

[Dausuul]

Now, you can try and run a game that way, but sort of like the discussions of Low Magic, you are working against the system put in place.

Nope. Not at all. Converting D&D to a low-magic game is a major undertaking. It hits races, classes, feats, treasure, monsters--practically the entire game.

Converting to humans-only, or a limited set of races, is trivial. You just say "The only races allowed are X, Y, and Z," and you're done. The system does not fight you at all. In all my years of kitbashing D&D, I can't think of a change that has caused less mechanical hassle. I suppose it might be a little more work if you ran published adventures and wanted to excise those races entirely (instead of just declaring them off limits to PCs), but that's it.

 

[prabe]

In the 37 years that I've been playing, I have seen fewer than 10 gnome characters. In my experience, people that want to go with an earthy race pick dwarves, and ones that want to go with a short and nimble race go with halflings. I'm not sure I agree that they are having trouble with having a distinct identity, though. It just seems like that identity isn't one that most people like very much.

I have two gnomes in one of the two campaigns I'm running. Obviously that doesn't invalidate your experience--it just means that different people have different experiences (which is practically tautological).

 

[Charlaquin]

Forest gnomes have a lot of conceptual overlap with halflings. Halflings and gnomes could easily be combined into one species with several cultures without anything valuable being lost.

Sure, you could do that. I like my gnomes and halflings being different, but you certainly could combine them, either with halflings or dwarves, or both.

 

[Minigiant]

Halfling kinda push the ewhole point in favor of exotic races.

Thing about it.

Halflings are a race of small humaniods who look like humans but (1) prefer to stay home. Only a few even like leaving home and it's only via curiosity. But even THEN halflings don't act, they watch in amusement (2), And even then, halflings don mess with stuff, they don't conquer or hunt or build or destroy (3). Oh and they suck at fighting fair (4) and have no magical history in their culture, arcane, clerical, or otherwise (5).

So why are a bunch of small passive homebody pranskters with little natural combat talent the third race list in a game about adventuring? If anything, they embody an NPC race more than orcs, tabaxi, tortles, and half-giants combined. The 5 weirdos that build the foundation of their inclusion in the game don'tdo enough to promote them to even inclusion in the PHB.

If D&D were influenced first by Journey to the West before The Lord of the Rings, there'd be little people pushing for hobbits or halflings in the Player Handbook as a common race for player character adventurers.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

That sounds like halflings.

No, it doesn't.

But even if it did, so what?

 

[Neonchameleon]

A 3 foot tall adult with adult physicality, of a species that is evolved to be that height and weight, dodging would work just fine. I assure you, even very short 9 year olds can be very, very, nimble and fast.

It's bizzare to see someone more puzzled by halflings than by dragon people.

Sure, but it has nothing to do with halflings not making sense, and everything to do with halflings being a more "basic" option than those two very dramatic options.

Not really.

Dodging works ... to an extent. You need to be spectacularly fast to dodge a polearm swing from a skilled wielder because you're trying to move your center of mass while they need to just roll their shoulders to be hitting an entirely different spot. Zelda-style dodge rolls only work because of iframes and the limitations of early 3d graphics. Your nine year olds are good at dodging you using only your arms - and even then they still lose a lot I expect.

It's unfortunately not bizarre to see someone more concerned with the texture of someone's skin than the serious physical day to day issues that they would have to deal with to operate in a reasonably normal society.

And Tolkien's hobbits worked because they were basically non-combatants and needed protecting. The Lord of the Rings was an escort mission that went really wrong. D&D is very combat centric.

As for popularity of gnomes vs halflings D&D Beyond and 538 released some data - halflings are more popular than gnomes but not by much (although half orcs are in the middle). Almost all the short rogues are halflings and the short wizards are gnomes - halflings also get monks and oddly enough bards.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Halfling kinda push the ewhole point in favor of exotic races.

Thing about it.

Halflings are a race of small humaniods who look like humans but (1) prefer to stay home. Only a few even like leaving home and it's only via curiosity. But even THEN halflings don't act, they watch in amusement (2), And even then, halflings don mess with stuff, they don't conquer or hunt or build or destroy (3). Oh and they suck at fighting fair (4) and have no magical history in their culture, arcane, clerical, or otherwise (5).

So why are a bunch of small passive homebody pranskters with little natural combat talent the third race list in a game about adventuring? If anything, they embody an NPC race more than orcs, tabaxi, tortles, and half-giants combined. The 5 weirdos that build the foundation of their inclusion in the game don'tdo enough to promote them to even inclusion in the PHB.

If D&D were influenced first by Journey to the West before The Lord of the Rings, there'd be little people pushing for hobbits or halflings in the Player Handbook as a common race for player character adventurers.

I doubt it.

The halfling is a better everyman than the human.

 

[prabe]

I doubt it.

The halfling is a better everyman than the human.

Kinda makes the metaphor "little people" literal, dunnit?

 

[Maxperson]

I have two gnomes in one of the two campaigns I'm running. Obviously that doesn't invalidate your experience--it just means that different people have different experiences (which is practically tautological).

Yeah. I get that. Oddly enough, one of those very few gnomes was just a few years ago.