D&D General why do we have halflings and gnomes?

[JiffyPopTart]

Smurfs are my favourite depiction of gnomes, not to mention the TPratchetts wee small men.

The Xvarts will remember that

 

[bedir than]

I like gnomes because they embody that liminal space in folklore where the bright line between elf and dwarf just doesn't exist. They are the classic little people and mythic tricksters. They are also important in alchemical lore, which I'm a fan of.

For halflings? Not a clue. They seem to me a one story people, that don't serve much point outside that one story.

Which brings up an interesting thing I've noticed. There are a contingent of players that for what ever reason don't like "short races", so they believe that there are also players that like "short races" just because they are small. It's kind of strange.

With all the discussion about accessibility and representation these days I want to bring up how I came to understand why representation matters.

During my 1e/2e playing days I was at most a 4'6 under 100 pound kid who was always the smallest kid in school, to include places where I was three+ years older than other students (middle school specifically, and even tinier than above).

I always played halflings and gnomes.

It took me until recently to understand that part of the appeal was specifically because they were heroes that were small. As someone who could never, ever be an athlete, I could play someone athletic and heroic. I could mimic Bilbo and become greater than my peoples say I could be.

Without this representation would I have gone on to join the US Army and eventually serving in 5th Special Forces Group? Probably not. Because the representation of the tiny heroes is part of what helped me believe in myself.

Don't remove halflings and gnomes because you don't understand them. You're closing off stories that other people at your tables will understand, and need.

 

[Minigiant]

Outside of having a high Dex Low Strength Acrobat race, I never saw the point of halflings. Especially the "humany", hobbitish, folksy, homebody halflings. If you don't emphasize their Dexterity and Adventurousness like 3e and 4e does, halfling are more a "good aligned monster" than "a well from which adventurers spring".

As for gnomes, I just see them as filling the biology and magitech field that elves and dwarves traditionally are not part of.

 

[billd91]

Outside of having a high Dex Low Strength Acrobat race, I never saw the point of halflings. Especially the "humany", hobbitish, folksy, homebody halflings. If you don't emphasize their Dexterity and Adventurousness like 3e and 4e does, halfling are more a "good aligned monster" than "a well from which adventurers spring".

Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks. Their folksy homebodiness is what makes them the best wells from which adventurers spring.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I'd rather ditch humans, dwarves, and elves, than halflings and gnomes, when building a world.

For a long time, I didn't like dnd halflings, and had only ever played one halfling character, and they were a halfling primarily because I wanted a semi-coastal farmer's kid turned thief from Sembia, and that backstory just fit a halfling better than a human. Eventually I formed a more fully realized understanding of halflings, and consider them important to DnD.

Halflings and gnomes have one thing of importance in common, and it ain't size. It's curiosity.

Halflings are possessed of incredible curiosity, and while many love the simple life, they are capable of incredible action when roused. They're also noticeably more nimble than humans, but smaller, and most people take them less seriously because of their size and youthful visage. You either can see the appeal of that or you can't.

Gnomes are similar in curiosity and liking to have their communities left alone while being friendly and social individually. They're also very bright, creative, and their curiosity is less about the world in front of them directly, like an explorer is curious, but more the curiosity of the scientist, the delver into secrets, the inventor. "Can I make this?" rather than "What's over that hill?" For Rock Gnomes, that is about invention, physical science, etc. For Forest Gnomes, it's more about magic, and nature.


Oh, the other thing that both races have that a lot of players want is comfy homes just under the surface. From David the Gnome to Hobbits of the Shire, it's dope as hell to imagine digging your home into the hillside or amongst the roots of a great tree. Gnome Home - Tiny House Blog

Now, the 5e gnome is sub-optimal thematically in that the Rock Gnome gets next to nothing of actual value from it's subrace, and the Forest gnome is the only one that gets to talk to small animals, but that's easily fixed by making it explicit that Rock gnomes can make things like repeating crossbows, and upgrades for the range and power of bows of all kinds, with their tinker tools, as well as improved block and tackle designs, etc, and giving the base race the ability to speak to small and smaller beasts. Minor illusion is really useful, so IMO that makes the two equal in power and makes it so that all gnomes can talk to small or smaller beasts.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks. Their folksy homebodiness is what makes them the best wells from which adventurers spring.

Well that, and the fact that...per their 5e description it's pretty normal for them to travel out of curiosity, making them a prime source of adventurers.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Because the Chainmail Fantasy Supplement was written in part to suggest ways to use figures of different scales all on the same battlefield. It is also partially an adaptation of a LotR-inspired war game, so it had to have hobbits. Gnomes are included for the same reason there are kobolds and faeries. Each of dwarves, goblins, and elves were given an alternative variant of diminutive cousins.

lol no.

That is why they are in the earliest version of dnd.

It doesn't explain their longevity in the game. That is quite simply explained by the fact that people enjoy playing them, and like the fiction of being an underdog in a small frame and overcoming that, and various other fictions that are well suited to these races.

 

[Minigiant]

Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks. Their folksy homebodiness is what makes them the best wells from which adventurers spring.

Their folksy homebodiness makes them a monster.

It's the curiosity that 3e/4e jacked up that moves them to adventurer. 5e toned it down a bit. 1e and 2e halflings needed to be prodded to leave home.

 

[see]

Halfings and gnomes are a PC option fundamentally because they both were in AD&D 1st edition's PHB, back in 1978, when there was no unified theory behind what was being done.

They are in 5th edition because the designers who poked too hard at "Why do we have . . . ?" reasoning when revising D&D were the ones who wound up making the commercial failure of 4th edition.

 

[Michael Linke]

There're articles out there talking about how reluctant Gygax was to include "Hobbits", but the players insisted. I think OD&D briefly mentioned Gnomes as a variant of Dwarves.