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

[Chaosmancer]

Also, halflings, unlike humans, wouldn’t run away in terror, they’d use hit and run tactics without giving in to fear.

Because people are really losing sight of how powerful Brave is as a racial trait, in terms of worldbuilding.

Halfling shield walls don’t fear the charge. Halfling cavalry don’t fear the wall.
Fear is a huge part of whether people survive danger, whether townsfolk repel bandits, etc.

A lower level fiend that could wipe out a human village will have a harder time with a halfling village because the halflings aren’t going to panic, and they are extremely unlikely to flub anything they try to do, which means they are more likely to try ballsy tactics, and less likely to have Hail Marys blow up in their faces.

Also, 5e totally misunderstands the lethality of slings, as a tangential note. A village where everyone is reasonably skilled with one and not afraid to use them in defense of thier town is a place where the incentive to raid needs to be much higher.

Being unafraid isn't what protects you from being gutted by a spear. Being unafraid isn't what protects you from an aura of magical death (one of the reasons I mentioned that specific low CR Demon).

Also, Brave gives advantage against fear, it doesn't make you immune. Halflings can still feel fear, they can still get scared, it is just harder to scare them.

And, don't forget, fear can save lives. Sometimes running away is the right answer. We have a fear response for a reason. Halflings bravely holding their shield wall against a charge of cavalry.... well they get crushed. They are three ft tall and under a hundred lbs, using polearms at disadvantage, against a few hundred pounds of armored horse, armored knight, and their devastating lances.

Bravery doesn't win fights alone. Panic can kill, yes, but bravery can also get you killed.

 

[Maxperson]

You are playing in a world. The world needs to exist and make sense or you really can't play the game.

Saying that monsters have to be rare or everyone would die can make some sense... but then makes you wonder why they exist in enough numbers to be the types of threats PCs fight all the time.

I mean, no one enters a Dungeon in this game and expects it to be empty. No one travels through the woods or mountains of their game world and expect to encounter nothing. But if monsters were truly rare, then they would actually expect there to be nothing. You can't world build and just say "well, threats are rare unless the PCs are nearby, then they are common" because that is not how world's work.

Sure. ADVENTURERS go to dungeons, and most of those who go through woods never encounter more than bandits, if even that. It's primarily PCs who wander into a Phase Spider nest or encounter a Bullette.

The world absolutely still makes sense if run as I'm telling it to you. It ceases to make sense the instant you try to apply PC numbers of monster encounters to the world at large. At that point if the world makes sense, it's dead except for monsters. That or you have to quadruple or quintuple the number of NPCs with class levels(or the equivelent) that you'd find in the Forgotten Realms, including those at super high levels. You'd need those just to keep people alive, and even then society is it is typically found in D&D has ceased to exist and is more Mad Max.

That is one assumption you can make. But it is not an assumption supported by anything in the texts. Far more likely is that there are a lot more defenses, guards, and powerful people in the world to protect civilizations. Most towns would have a dedicated and trained guard force, defenses built to help protect them from the more common threats of their area.

As I said above, you'd need at least 4-5 times the numbers that you find in Forgotten Realms. I mean, if you want to reduce the PCs to just another group in a very large crowd of similar groups, go for it. Me, I like the PCs to be more special than that.

 

[Maxperson]

Being unafraid isn't what protects you from being gutted by a spear. Being unafraid isn't what protects you from an aura of magical death (one of the reasons I mentioned that specific low CR Demon).

True. Halflings have luck to make those easy saves, and to get an abnormally high number of hits and crits against the enemy. A force of Halflings in combat would be a truly scary thing to face. Even for 3 of those demons.

 

[Chaosmancer]

We are talking raiders here?

While halflings may be willing to fight to the death to defend their families and friends, goblins and orcs who just want to snag some easy grub probably aren't.

I have a feeling that you may be trying to apply PC logic (encountering several life-threatening situations in a single day of travel, running into cults, fiends and raiding parties regularly, opponents fighting to the death etc) to all aspects of world-building.

Sure, the halflings might just run. Let the goblins and orcs raid and destroy their village, steal their harvest and hope they leave enough for the halflings to survive the winter and that only a few halflings are killed off in the attack.

Not quite the idealistic farming communities we are told to picture though.

And, I reject this idea that there is PC logic vs World Logic. If the PCs leave town and encounter a goblin raiding party within one days travel of a village, then there was a goblin raiding party within one days travel of the village. Maybe it was the only goblin raiding party within 3000 miles, but that seems a little suspicious. Especially since a month later, they encounter more goblins.

And, at first level, when you get your first mission, the townspeople don't say "These strange unknown creatures came out of the night and stole our pigs" they say "Goblins stole our pigs".

Goblins are a known quantity to the townspeople, they are encountered often enough that people know what they are and how dangerous they are, So, they have to be attacking villages at least once every few years at a minimum. And considering Goblins don't farm or generally hunt, they steal a lot of their food from other races, then I doubt they are only attacking every few years.

Or take orcs, orcs are specifically listed as raiding. Constantly raiding. And they also don't farm, they do hunt more, but they are presented as attacking "civilized settlements" regularly.

Ogres are specifically listed as enjoying the taste of elves, dwarves and halflings. That fact tells us that they would attack such people whenever they found them. They lair in caves and under trees, until specifically they find a cabin or farmhouse, then kill the inhabitants and take it over as a lair. And, when the brave heroes kill the ogre, they didn't kill the only ogre in the entire kingdom, they killed one ogre. There are more ogres. Enough ogres that we know they can be bullied into serving giants or goblins or a number of other monsters. They have an entire population, there must be, logically, hundreds of ogres. All doing the same thing.

We have to remember, most monsters listed in the monster manual are not unique. They are a race of beings. They have a population. Unless they are on the verge of going extinct, there must be hundreds to thousands of them in their habitats.

And these are some of the most commonly used monsters in the game. Everyone uses some of these. And they don't stop existing just because you got to higher levels, you are just dealing with more important threats.

 

[Chaosmancer]

None(or almost none, I didn't look at all) of them are immune to non-magical weapons. Even Balors and Pit Fiends are only resistant to them. That means that the halfling village will be doing 1/2 damage or even full damage, since many lower level fiends take full damage, to the attacking fiend. On top of that, since they are all lucky, there will be abnormal amount of critical hits.

That is not how the lucky feature works.

 

[Chaosmancer]

According to the 5e PH it is not just human kingdoms and it is not just farmers.

From the 5e PH:

Yes, I get that, but that was the question being asked, and the response was to simply reply with dwarven stereotypes.

And again, it is kind of a weird situation to have halflings just... not have their own places, while still having their own places.

There are no halfling lands, but there are halfling villages. That is an odd disconnect

 

[Chaosmancer]

People are assuming that since they are not interested in conquest or kingdoms that they are defenseless and/or must be protected by others.

I don't think that makes any sense any more than halflings don't try to defend themselves through brute strength.

How about the fact that there are points of the lore that specifically say they are protected by others? Think that may be why that assumption is being made?

 

[Oofta]

How about the fact that there are points of the lore that specifically say they are protected by others? Think that may be why that assumption is being made?

Like most societies, people in many communities are protected by others. Halflings make good neighbors and citizens because they don't make a fuss.

That doesn't mean they must have protection.

 

[Maxperson]

That is not how the lucky feature works.

That's exactly how it works.

"Lucky. When you roll a 1 on the d20 for an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, you can reroll the die and must use the new roll."

1 in 20 will be a crit. 1 in 20 will be a 1 that is re-rolled to a hit or a crit. Same with saves. More halflings will make that easy save than humans. More will hit or crit the demons. It's basic math.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Sure. ADVENTURERS go to dungeons, and most of those who go through woods never encounter more than bandits, if even that. It's primarily PCs who wander into a Phase Spider nest or encounter a Bullette.

The world absolutely still makes sense if run as I'm telling it to you. It ceases to make sense the instant you try to apply PC numbers of monster encounters to the world at large. At that point if the world makes sense, it's dead except for monsters. That or you have to quadruple or quintuple the number of NPCs with class levels(or the equivelent) that you'd find in the Forgotten Realms, including those at super high levels. You'd need those just to keep people alive, and even then society is it is typically found in D&D has ceased to exist and is more Mad Max.

What do those monsters in the dungeon eat? If you have a dungeon full of goblins near a town, how are they getting their food? Traditionally, they are raiding the town. That is why the adventurers get called in.

And again, if every single monster is so rare that only PCs encounter them, and only once or twice in their entire lifetimes... then why do the Adventurers fear those monsters? There are no goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears, ogres, trolls, girallons, displacer beasts, bulletes, phase spiders, ettercaps, owlbears, Blights, manticores, wyverns, griffons, hippogriffs, hags, Ankhegs, Basilisks, Bullywugs, Carrion Crawlers, Cyclops, Ettins, Zombies, Skeletons, wights, Wraiths, specters, ghosts, shadows, darkmantles, mimics, demons, devils, dryads, man-eating plants, ghouls, giants, gnolls, gricks, grimlocks, trogolodytes, lizardfolk, harpies, kobolds, kuotoua, oozes, perytons, yetis, peircers, ropers, Sahuagin or stirges out in the world.

After all, there might have been once, but the only known time of them being encountered, they were killed by adventurers and the entire region has been safe since then. And monsters can't just magically appear out of thin air.

As I said above, you'd need at least 4-5 times the numbers that you find in Forgotten Realms. I mean, if you want to reduce the PCs to just another group in a very large crowd of similar groups, go for it. Me, I like the PCs to be more special than that.

You can want the PCs to be more special, but the world's of DnD are not set up to have nearly non-existant monster populations.