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

[tetrasodium]

Dude, "Eberron Halflings exist" doesn't tell us anything about generic, general halflings.

They are dinosaur riding barbarians, and that is cool, but most settings don't use them

Actually there are also the mob/mafia type boromir and healing specialized jorasco halflings plus the regular people ones. Your talenta/blade desert clan summari is a bit lacking too. I wrote about them as well as the datksin ones earlier.... funny how "most settings don't use them" never seems to apply when it's an excuse to cramp in more fr lore

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

If the only adventurer option are Rebellious Punk, Disaster Survivors, and Street Urchins... is that race complete as an adventurer option. Can you even play a halfling adventurer straight? My favorite 5e character of mine is a halfling bard. Jillian Briarfoot - "now, I know I have a girl's...

www.enworld.org

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Agreed, which is why little villages on the frontiers of dangerous territory don't make a lot of sense. They can't afford to protect themselves, and they can't rely on distant cities to protect them from their neighbors.

Keeping up any sort of preparedness in a dangerous frontier is impractical with pseudo-medieval agriculture. You need pretty much every able-bodied person to be working the land, not manning defences, or you simply won't be able to feed the village.

The only times you are likely to find a heavily defended settlement in a monster-infested region is if they are producing some sort of valuable resource (e.g. a gold mine) which they can use to pay to import food and weapons.

Fortunately, most well designed D&D settings have relatively civilised monster free regions where most people live, as well as monster-infested frontiers.

Of course, the civilised regions tend to be glossed over in setting books, because they are of little interest to adventurers.

Relying on adventurers can work, but it is fully reactionary, unless you have a massive spy network like the Harper's supposedly are, who are going about keeping an eye on every threat to every small village in the entire world. Which... strains credibility.

It's not realistic, but it's a conceit which is necessary to buy into for a D&D world to work. It isn't only magic which requires D&D players to suspend their disbelief.

 

[tetrasodium]

Keeping up any sort of preparedness in a dangerous frontier is impractical with pseudo-medieval agriculture. You need pretty much every able-bodied person to be working the land, not manning defences, or you simply won't be able to feed the village.

The only times you are likely to find a heavily defended settlement in a monster-infested region is if they are producing some sort of valuable resource (e.g. a gold mine) which they can use to pay to import food and weapons.

Fortunately, most well designed D&D settings have relatively civilised monster free regions where most people live, as well as monster-infested frontiers.

Of course, the civilised regions tend to be glossed over in setting books, because they are of little interest to adventurers.

It's not realistic, but it's a conceit which is necessary to buy into for a D&D world to work. It isn't only magic which requires D&D players to suspend their disbelief.

The hyper developed do nothing groups like harpers zhentarim etc aren't required for a world to work, they are a plot device, likely from a novel, that word suddenly built the world around. In the history of d&d/ faerun they are fairly recent and every adventure suddenly having them crammed in is definitely a new thing.

They would strain credibility as a contingent spanning decentralized HUMINT version of today's "big data" with no political or profit motive; doing it in a world without even a reliable mail service even more so. If they were s some modern nation state's intelligence or even secret police agency on the modern world mayyybe but by virtue of not actually doing anything to the world but existing they are even odder.

Providing security and managing peace is big money, that's a big part of why feudal lords existed to tax people. Those fr mega agencies aren't trying to do that as direct "we are the feudal lord's men" or even some kind of denieth type pmc hired by the lord. All of this doubly exposes how odd fr style halfling villages being discussed are

 

[Mind of tempest]

The hyper developed do nothing groups like harpers zhentarim etc aren't required for a world to work, they are a plot device, likely from a novel, that word suddenly built the world around. In the history of d&d/ faerun they are fairly recent and every adventure suddenly having them crammed in is definitely a new thing.

They would strain credibility as a contingent spanning decentralized HUMINT version of today's "big data" with no political or profit motive; doing it in a world without even a reliable mail service even more so. If they were s some modern nation state's intelligence or even secret police agency on the modern world mayyybe but by virtue of not actually doing anything to the world but existing they are even odder.

Providing security and managing peace is big money, that's a big part of why feudal lords existed to tax people. Those fr mega agencies aren't trying to do that as direct "we are the feudal lord's men" or even some kind of denieth type pmc hired by the lord. All of this doubly exposes how odd fr style halfling villages being discussed are

I hear harpers are backed by gods or something but past that yeah something is amiss in world-building.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Averaging 40 pounds, they burn significantly less calories than larger sized creatures. The many meals a day si not detailed in the PHB, just outside sources like Tolkien, and that also doesn't mean that those are large meals. One real world diet method is eating lots of small meals during the day in order not to feel hungry and binge.

Halflings needing to eat much more than humans relative to their weight could help explain their freakish strength. Human muscles in the real world aren't as strong as those of most other mammals because they are built for endurance. Thus it is not hard to posit that halfling muscles might be 5 times stronger than human muscle, but require 5 times the calorie upkeep as well.

And I laid out why that really doesn't work.

Unless they can send Paladins 44 hours before an attack happens, they are too far away. And how does that help towns even further into the wilderness or with no Bag of Paladin's nearby?

Which would be small towns without protection... like Phandalin. Which is too far away to be effectively defended.

Also, a lot of these monsters aren't exactly the type to fear what humans will send after them. Heck, the Goblinoids in the Neverwinter Woods are fighting the Fey and the Elves and getting driven out. They are losing their homes, which makes a good reason to attack Phandalin.

Just to clarify, are you talking about a few opportunistic orcs turning up and running off with livestock from an outlying farm? Or are you talking about an organised raiding party/small army that gathers and moves towards Phandalin with the intent to invade and occupy it long enough to loot it, then cart their plunder back towards the mountains?

Are you also making the assumption that if a place with Waterdeep's resources decides to send a group of high-level adventurers to defend from or retaliate to a raiding party at an isolated town they are going to expect them to walk there?
Even if the response party arrives too late to actually defend the town, they can probably ensure that the raiders never make it back to their tribe deeper in the wilderness. Stories of how the tribe lost half of its members three generations back can be an effective deterrent.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I’ve said it about every other race writeup in that terrible book, I might as well say it again. There is very little of any value in MToF when it comes to playable race lore. It actively makes Corellon a crappy god that merits no worship, ever, and makes the dwarves and probably Moradin the bad guys in the history of the Duergar, and it goes so far out of its way to reverse engineer a way to make halflings look cute and stupid that it ends up in fracking cheap cartoon territory.

Just because the rules aren't good doesn't mean those aren't the rules.

I'm not going to disagree with you that a lot of stuff in the book is bad, especially Moradin and the Dwarves which is appallingly bad, but if we want to answer the question "What does 5e say about halflings" there it is. That is what 5e presents halflings as.

Now, Eberron, Dark Sun, and homebrew worlds are different, but core Halfling lore is what I posted.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Just because the rules aren't good doesn't mean those aren't the rules.

I'm not going to disagree with you that a lot of stuff in the book is bad, especially Moradin and the Dwarves which is appallingly bad, but if we want to answer the question "What does 5e say about halflings" there it is. That is what 5e presents halflings as.

Now, Eberron, Dark Sun, and homebrew worlds are different, but core Halfling lore is what I posted.

No, the PHB is “the rules”, and even then we are discussing flavor text, which isn’t rules. Mordy’s is an optional supplement, meaning nothing in it has the same rules status as what’s in the phb.

 

[Chaosmancer]

They do? Not IME.

Really?

"My town was destroyed by Orcs/Gnolls/Goblins/Undead" is a pretty bog-standard thing. Lots of adventures where a cult/horde/army ect is nearby and causing trouble.

Plus, goblinoids/Gnolls/Orcs/Hill Giants/Ogres/Ettins/Chromatic Dragons/ ect are presented as pretty much always attacking the civilized races.

I'd say a serious threat to a town happens once a year or so, from the way things are presented.

Not really. Halflings live up to what, 130? And being lucky, not fearful, and quick and nimble, means they’re more likely to survive danger than most races.

I’d posit that by thier 5e lore, a halfling town should have 2-3 more retired adventurers per capita than a human town.

I'd say that is a vastly over-estimated number. Especially since Halflings are pre-disposed to the most dangerous jobs in the party. Scouts.

They would have no more than the rest of the group, unless of course, "Luck" is the answer again. "Well, as luck would have it most halflings survive, and most halfling towns aren't attacked, and most yadda yadda yadda"

It is again, just kind of grating.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Actually there are also the mob/mafia type boromir and healing specialized jorasco halflings plus the regular people ones. Your talenta/blade desert clan summari is a bit lacking too. I wrote about them as well as the datksin ones earlier.... funny how "most settings don't use them" never seems to apply when it's an excuse to cramp in more fr lore

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

If the only adventurer option are Rebellious Punk, Disaster Survivors, and Street Urchins... is that race complete as an adventurer option. Can you even play a halfling adventurer straight? My favorite 5e character of mine is a halfling bard. Jillian Briarfoot - "now, I know I have a girl's...

www.enworld.org

Your point?

Yes, Eberron has a lot of neat ideas about halflings. Most settings aren't Eberron. Eberron isn't the default. I'd be drooling over the idea of making Eberron the default, because I think it is one of the best written settings in DnD canon, but it isn't.

Pretty much any problem with races I have you could say "But what about Eberron" and I'd agree the Eberron version is really cool. But, relying on the Eberron version when it isn't the version most people look at, are familiar with, or use, isn't helpful.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Keeping up any sort of preparedness in a dangerous frontier is impractical with pseudo-medieval agriculture. You need pretty much every able-bodied person to be working the land, not manning defenses, or you simply won't be able to feed the village.

The only times you are likely to find a heavily defended settlement in a monster-infested region is if they are producing some sort of valuable resource (e.g. a gold mine) which they can use to pay to import food and weapons.

Fortunately, most well designed D&D settings have relatively civilized monster free regions where most people live, as well as monster-infested frontiers.

Of course, the civilized regions tend to be glossed over in setting books, because they are of little interest to adventurers.

It's not realistic, but it's a conceit which is necessary to buy into for a D&D world to work. It isn't only magic which requires D&D players to suspend their disbelief.

Sure, but I think that is a valid concern when asking "why are we doing this" if the answer is "Well, we have to suspend disbelief, because it wouldn't work like this, but we are doing it that way anyways."

You can do that, but why when you could just acknowledge that that version doesn't work and you should probably try and find a better version?