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

[doctorbadwolf]

Okay. Less will go wrong, but the luck isn't that fantastic in combat. I don't agree with his assessment there.

I speak from both experience and the math, but also from a playstyle where ability checks in combat are very common, because we aren’t just standing in line watching the HP rise and fall. The halflings have their improvised moves go awry less often, because they effectively never get a nat 1. The more rolls made, the more noticeable it is.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Oh, man... Do you know what you've done, now?

Who here has seen Rick & Morty? Season 2 I think it was...the evil/mad/mass-murdering Rick with the cybernetic "real villain" Morty pulling the strings...in his giant dome of doom, that is covered (and I mean "covered," every foot) on the exterior by Morty's being endlessly pricked to "mask/hide" the Rick with his "Morty stupidity-based cloaking field"...

Yeah. Yep. That's what you've done. One uber-overlord villain who lines his, let's say stronghold's walls, with bound, spread-eagle, halflings against the tiny "iron maiden" like spikes on the walls to induce their wails of misery and extract all of the "good luck" bonuses upon the entire facility. Guards can't miss. No one can scry the interior accurately. Teleportations go tragically awry. Any seige/attackers ends up with the portcullis falling on them even after their infiltrators have locked it up. A moat just spontaneously sinks around the walls as the invaders near and several ranks wash away...

Oh yeah. This is gonna be good...muahahaha.

I’d think thier luck, if the overlord somehow succeeded in setting this up, would more make things go awry and benefit anyone attacking.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I can find some explanation I want, for example halflings can survive genocides because there are a taboo about torturing halfling slaves (this is partially true, because the responsables get a lot of ballots for a travel to the demiplane of the dread). They can be slavered, and sometimes eaten by evil humanoids, but they are a divine curse against the mass-murderes, something like the Spanish Muslim Almanzor who attacked Christian towns, but a generation after a civil war in al-Andalus ended the Omeya caliphal dinasty and the kingdom broke into "taifas" (smaller Muslims Spanish realms).

Halflings can suffer by the attacks of evil humanoid or epidemic, like the rest of civilitated people, but to forget that pain and fear they would to think about the happy days. They sing and dance because if the stopped then the bad memories come back.

 

[tetrasodium]

Cool. Show me where it says that the Orc gods work to overcome the Halfling gods and remove Halfling luck. If you can, then there are two sides to this. Otherwise, it's just the Halfling gods.

Gods tend to work in limited capacity related to their portfolios and Orc/Goblin gods aren't the subtle sort to go around and try to negate Halfling luck.

There are gods of all sorts of things. Wealth Trade & so on for example. Taxpaying commoners living peacefully within the territory of a lord with their own armed force are good at providing part of all those things & in many cases would still be able to worship whatever halfling god they want to worship without interference leaving little reason for the halfling gods to "protect" those sharecropping serfs to be from a peaceful life protected by the lord's army while benefitting from things like organized trade. Your interpretation that needs to resort to because the gods assumes that everyone else & their gods will no longer act in a logical manner or are not on equal footing.

 

[Charlaquin]

Halflings are great bards, their write-up just doesn’t mention music or dance or art or artistry.
Halflings are great rogues, their write-up just emphasises how community-oriented they are, how they go out of their way to avoid trouble, how they don’t particularly care for treasure, and how their communities are so generous, halflings don’t need to steal anyway.
Halflings are great rangers, their write-up just doesn’t mention nature.

You can love halflings and still recognize that their write-up is pretty lackluster.

Charlaquin posted their own ideas of halflings in another thread (a race that has been enslaved in the past and for whom their image for being friendly and avoiding notice is a defense mechanism), and that description does a much better job of explaining why you would have halfling rogues, halfling bards and halfling rangers.

Thanks! While I’m firmly in the “halflings work fine as-written” camp, I am rather pleased with my re-interpretation

 

[Chaosmancer]

By your logic no commoners or farmers could survive outside of city walls and everyone would starve to death. If your D&D campaign world is that dangerous, it's illogical.

Do armies invade? Sure. They always have. People scatter, hide, or suffer the consequences just like (unfortunately) in the real world. Halflings are just slightly better at their communities going unnoticed.

You realize that walls don't only have to go around cities right?

Also, no reason that you can't live behind walls in a city, then head out to farm the local area during the day, perhaps with roving patrols of people to keep an eye out for various threats.

Sure, you could still have flying threats, but that is why you have crossbows, ballistas, and bows. Also, quite famously, there are very few places to hide or sneak up on people from the sky.

Which cuts down the number of threats significantly, leaving only underground threats.


And, halflings aren't presented as "slightly better" they are presented as nearly perfectly hidden. Halflings are so safe as to border on the impossible. Which is its own problem.

 

[Maxperson]

And, halflings aren't presented as "slightly better" they are presented as nearly perfectly hidden. Halflings are so safe as to border on the impossible. Which is its own problem.

It's actually in-between both of your extremes. Extremely well hidden, but not impossible or nearly so, and not "slightly better," either.

 

[Oofta]

You realize that walls don't only have to go around cities right?

Also, no reason that you can't live behind walls in a city, then head out to farm the local area during the day, perhaps with roving patrols of people to keep an eye out for various threats.

Sure, you could still have flying threats, but that is why you have crossbows, ballistas, and bows. Also, quite famously, there are very few places to hide or sneak up on people from the sky.

Which cuts down the number of threats significantly, leaving only underground threats.


And, halflings aren't presented as "slightly better" they are presented as nearly perfectly hidden. Halflings are so safe as to border on the impossible. Which is its own problem.

That's not what the book says (I'm assuming you're referring to MToF). It's full of "mights" and "maybes". Halflings are good at finding difficult to find areas many people will not notice, they aren't invisible.

Then again, that text is in an optional book so feel free to ignore it if it bothers you so much. Between 50-70% of any populace with the tech level standard for D&D are going to be farmers. There's no way they're all going to retreat inside at night in most campaigns. Besides, it's not like there are many monsters in this edition that are sunlight averse so it's not like daytime would be any safer.

If the world was as dangerous as you posit, everyone would starve to death.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Did you miss the part where it said that they live far away from monsters? So..............almost all of them.

Poor reading of my question, because I typed too fast.

"How many of those human, elf and dwarf towns and villages with their retired adventurers are completely safe from monsters attack?" was the question. I meant the ellipse and paragraph break to be a long pause, didn't think about how that would effect the reading for you to completely ignore the fact that I was talking about elves, dwarves and humans.

Fact are facts. There are about as many Halfling adventurers as there are Human, Dwarf or Elf. They live somewhere. And some of the village elders were adventurers. There are going to be some in the village.

Facts are facts. The text says that some villages have Elders who were adventures. Not all. So there are going to be no retired adventurers in some villages.

Also, you have no idea what the population numbers are, and are basing your "there are about as many" number on pure speculation based on their being a core four races. It could be that human adventurers make up 50% of all adventurers in the entire world, and the elves, dwarves and halflings are just the next biggest populations. You have no idea.

It mentions them in common sense and D&D. It's moronic to think that halflings have no access to anything other than sticks or stones. Listing it under a goddess and not under society indicates that those are holy rites to train in tactics, not the only things available to Halflings. Do you have anything other than holy rites?

So you agree with me that the lore write up for halflings makes no sense. That I am right.

Because you just said that "common sense" tells us that halflings have to have more than this. You then are asking me if I have any military tactics beyond the only military tactics listed in the lore for Halflings.

Why don't you tell me. Is there any mention of halflings in Mordenkainen's using weapons other than sticks and stones to defend their villages? Is there any indication that by saying that the tactics (which are regarded as the Goddess favorites) are simply religious excersises and not actual military tactics? Especially considering this: "In this way, the halflings get practical experience in executing measures that are designed to help the halflings defeat kobolds and goblin raiders, or even take down an ogre. When the time comes to put those tactics to use in earnest, everyone will be ready." is right before they start going into the tactics?



You are free to tell me what common sense dictates. I'm telling you what the book says. And if you think what the book says is wrong, well, it was a long journey, but I knew you'd see it my way eventually.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Let me just blow 13 and a half years of dust off this: The Unified Theory of Gnomes.

Gnomes are the tricky little guy. The trickster, the guy for whom the world world is bigger and meaner than (as opposed to kobolds and goblins, who are as mean as anything that might come for them). They survive by their wits in a multiverse that, if it were ever to remember them, would rub them out just to kill some time.

They love gadgets and magic and hanging out with animals and wouldn't say no to a nice dinner and a pleasant walk in the woods and hills after.

And despite all that, they're still good-natured, friendly folk.

They're Spider-Man, if Spider-Man was three feet tall and Aunt May was a badger.

Halflings are a similar idea, but more cosmopolitan: Instead of disengaging with larger society, they're part of it, relying on the social contract that suggests that peaceful agrarian societies should be left alone. The world has other ideas, of course, which is the source of many halfling adventurers, who work to preserve a way of life that has value and meaning, even as the rest of the world seems like it's on fire. And the rest of the time, when those guardians of halfling life have done their jobs too well, halfling player characters are the ones striking out looking for the adventure they can't find at home.

I think there's an argument that they should be subraces of a single race, but I can't imagine a game like D&D without having a plucky little protagonist type smaller, weaker but cleverer than all of their foes. That's a great archetype and a classic of myth and fiction for a reason.