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

[Maxperson]

Was it you or someone else who was saying that the roads they use for such trade are so small & narrow that dangerous things like bandits & raiders wouldn't be able to even travel on them? Whoever it was this is an example of their plot armor cracking

Must have been someone else. I said that they go unnoticed by even Rangers, per the lore.

 

[Weiley31]

Well the Halflings run the boating system. And the Gnomes are used to beat out the Halfling and Goliath Bodybuilders who keep on getting into a competition all the time.

 

[Chaosmancer]

This is a philosophical position. And sure, in real life there is no such thing as luck, just random chance. But if luck is an actual thing, that you can have more of or less of, then yes, it does apply to everything. I already mentioned the Ringworld books, where luck is definitely a thing, and aliens created a birth lottery in order to bread the luckiest humans possible, ending up with someone who is almost invincible. Try to shoot them and your weapon jams. Try to punch them and you slip on a banana skin and fall.

It's worth noting that some RPGs have a Luck stat. Kirk had a super-high one in FASA Star Trek RPG.

Back when I was playing the Golden Heroes RPG in the 1980s one of the PCs had Unconscious Probability Manipulation, which was almost certainly the strongest superpower in the game.

I'm very aware of the trope.

I am also aware of the counter to that power, which is to limit and lower variables. At a certain point probability becomes so certain that the outcome is inevitable, barring an ever increasingly powerful luck ability.

And, we know that halfling luck is not that powerful. Halfling adventures still get caught by traps, they still get caught in ambushes, they can still be hit by critical hits. Their Probability Manipulation on an individual level is not that impressive. So, even in the aggregate, it seems unlikely that it could stop something that doesn't have very many variables. Get a compass, say "travel north 1 day" and it would take some extreme probability manipulation to have that person not reach a point pretty close to exactly one day northward.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Smoke isn't always seen or present. You avoid it being seen by luck. And clearly from the lore, SOMETIMES they are still, despite everything, attacked.

Halflings love good food and a warm hearth.

So, they would have fires for dinner. Fires for breakfast. Possibly fires for noon. Are there blacksmiths in that halfling shire? Then they would be having fires running fairly consistently. Smoking food? That makes smoke.

Sure, I guess you could get lucky enough that over a dozen fires going near simultaneously multiple times a day would go unnoticed, but that is a level of luck that is nearly absurd.

And, if with that level of luck, as you say, the village would still be attacked. So, it doesn't even matter that no one can find the village, because eventually someone does find the village.

Fair enough. I was again using logic. Halflings are not suicidal and have good, inherent hiding ability. You can suicide your Halflings against an overwhelming enemy. Mine will know when to fight and when to hide.

So, I don't really know how to respond to this.

You agreed with me that all of this running and hiding isn't in the book. This constant refrain you've started since finishing the arguments on the halfling fighting ability of "well then they would hide" which is never mentioned.

Then you accuse me of wanting to suicide run them, which I never claimed. I was saying your claim was unsupported, that I backed the opposite claim to the point of absurdity.

But, I think the biggest thing, the thing that sticks out to me was this line "I was again using logic". This sticks out to me, because every time you are "using logic" you are stepping outside of what the book tells us and applying your own standards to it. You are altering some facet of the narrative we are given. "Halflings are said to only use rocks and stick." "Well, LOGICALLY. they wouldn't do that and they would have access to better weapons." "Halfings aren't really portrayed as running and hiding all the time." "Well, LOGICALLY, they would because they are good at it and it is the proper response to an overwhelming threat"


The problem is, that all of your "LOGICALLY"'s exist in the space where the lore is incomplete. Where it doesn't make sense. Every time you use logic to tell me how it clearly would be, you are proving my point that the lore is incomplete, that it doesn't make sense.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Because this. Because 'loves to laugh' is somehow a failing here.

Without joy and levity and comfort and something to work toward, it's all an endless bleak slog through endless sadness and dark-eyes hard men doing awful things because the writer is stuck in the 90's and wants you to take their elf game REAL SERIOUS.

I don't care about military might or making the world so deadly that not even bacteria can survive the night.

I want action and adventure and fun with a heart.

Remember when I said I created a Death World? It's not so I can giggle with glee over all the blood spatter or pretend I'm deep b showing how terrible things can get. I created a Death World so characters can rise above it. So that people can aspire to halfling status where their children and children's children can enjoy good food and comfort. Eschewing that, mocking that, acting as if that has no place in D&D? That bothers me a great deal.

Then you need to pay way more attention to what I am actually saying, because I'm not mocking anything. I'm not even saying that wanting good food and comfort is bad.

What I am saying is that the lands of DnD are dangerous. Very dangerous. And if you have a group of people who love good food, and comfort and decide that they don't need to defend it, that they don't have to fight to keep that comfort in a world where hundreds of threats will want to take it from you, then you are telling me that everyone who is fighting for those things, is doing it wrong.

Dwarves love song, ale, good company, and spending time with their families. They also have thick walls and soldiers who forgo that joy to protect their community from the threats of the world. That sacrifice has meaning, because that joy has meaning, and they have something to go home to.

Halflings, we are told, don't make that sacrifice. Because they are so innocent and so unambitious and so lucky, they don't need soldiers to defend their homes. Their homes are just safe.

While the human son of a blacksmith might have nightmares from the day he spent on the wall, fighting to keep his lover safe from a ravenous horde of gnolls, the halfling son of a blacksmith has never had to worry about such things. Orcs just don't attack them, they live in a land that is free of strife, they don't even have walls to defend them, because they don't need them.


Do you see the problem here? This narrative pretty much tells the humans, dwarves and elves who are constantly fighting to secure those places where people don't have to worry about fighting, to keep their homes bright and cheerful, it tells them that if they were just better people, less ambitious, less greedy, more inclined to the simple life like halflings, that they wouldn't even need to fight. It is, in effect, their own fault that they suffer to protect the good things in life.

And the truth is... that is wrong. If the humans, dwarves, and elves stepped aside, then the world would be ruined. Sure, some may be greedy or ambitious, but the DnD worlds are dark places where the light struggles to shine, because malevolent forces seek to snuff it out. And halflings are just protected from all of it, by dint of fiat.

I have no problem that they love good food, that they love the comforts of home. Everyone does. My problem is that we are told everyone else has to fight for that, they must fight to preserve it, and yet the halflings are just given it, because they are just good, simple folk.

 

[Don Durito]

I often do halflings as river people. I'm not sure exactly where it came from. Probably Tolkien's description of Smeagol's origins and the fact that I had otter people in a Gamma World game I ran years ago.

But it explains their big feet, they're basically flippers to help them with swimming. And even their love of food - people who spend lots of time in cold water need their body fat (Halflings from southern climates are more svelte).

In my settings halflings travel up and down rivers and waterways on barges and canoe and conduct a lot of the river trade.

 

[Chaosmancer]

A map was presented with some areas colored in red that were described as "This is where the monsters are". There are other areas not colored in red, that can then be inferred to be "This is where monsters are not."

But now you are saying that the entire map, even the non red hexes, are areas "Where monsters are" because they can travel. So then I ask you, what is the purpose of the original red areas if you are just going to consider the entire map "areas in danger of monster attack".

I posted earlier a map of Wales showing that attacks and raids occur along the edge of a "dangerous" territory and a "civilized" one. The farther away you are from the borderlands (and the keeps on those borderlands) in the civilized area the less likely you are to have issue with things located in the "dangerous" areas. Vikings (and yes, they are not a direct replacement for landbound orcs) generally raided coastal areas. If you had a small town in the middle of England your chance of being raided by vikings would have been much lower than if you were a fishing community sitting on the shore.

This is exactly what my worldview translates to my D&D world. There are civilized areas and there are dangerous areas and the closer you are to the dangerous area the more likely you are to have issues. Halflings, then, would tend to live in those safer areas. In your worldview you view those red areas on the FR map as being staging areas where the monsters are going to emerge from to fill up the entire rest of the map. In my worldview those red areas represent the "danger zone" of being attacked by some monster that lives somewhere inside that red blob, most likely towards the center.

In the most traditional of D&D games you will hear tale of "The dragon that lives on that mountain peak" or "This way leads to the goblin hoard". That would imply that common folk know where the bad guys are and where the bad guys aren't. It further implies that unless you go sticking your nose into the trouble, you are fairly safe from it coming to look for you.

See, you say my point for me and then act like you don't get it.

You posted a picture of Wales, and that showed that the further away from the dangerous areas (the shore) the safer they were.

I posted a picture of Faerun, showing that there are so very very few "central areas" away from the border. Those red ares are where the monsters are reported to live, now maybe they do live in the center and only raid within that red area. Maybe they leave it and travel. Your picture of Wales was showing where vikings who lived weeks away by boat landed and attacked, why should I say that monsters can't travel a few days if Vikings could travel weeks?

And the bigger point was that people keep claiming I am making DnD a deathworld. That I am making monsters far more common than they would be. That I am making them attack far more than they would. But, I am not. A raid every three years is not unreasonable. Traveling a few days is not unreasonable. And the map shows, DnD worlds are designed stuffed with monsters. I am not creating this. I am just taking the information we are given and saying "given this, this is the problem I see."

 

[Chaosmancer]

Why does it matter if it takes Vikings weeks to get to a coastal area to raid? Just live inland and you will almost always be safe from Vikings.

Vikings were willing to travel weeks to reach a raiding spot.

Therefore monsters would be willing to travel two or three days to reach a raiding spot.

If that was the point, you failed. An invading raid party isn't a monster living on the frontiers. The frontier monster has no reason and would in fact be a moron to try and go into civilized lands to attack when it has frontier areas. For that matter, a raid party would have to be stupid to try and go into the center of a country and then get back out. Raids have to be quick and strike at the outskirts so you can escape quickly.

You mean like an area within a single days travel of the monsters land? Which is 85% of the map?

The furthest distance I counted from monster to central "civilized land" was three days. So, how did I fail here? Why can't they go a day into the frontier and back out? How is that not still a quick strike?

 

[Maxperson]

Halflings love good food and a warm hearth.

So, they would have fires for dinner. Fires for breakfast. Possibly fires for noon. Are there blacksmiths in that halfling shire? Then they would be having fires running fairly consistently. Smoking food? That makes smoke.

Sure, I guess you could get lucky enough that over a dozen fires going near simultaneously multiple times a day would go unnoticed, but that is a level of luck that is nearly absurd.

That's why it's good to have gods on your side.

You agreed with me that all of this running and hiding isn't in the book. This constant refrain you've started since finishing the arguments on the halfling fighting ability of "well then they would hide" which is never mentioned.

Then you accuse me of wanting to suicide run them, which I never claimed. I was saying your claim was unsupported, that I backed the opposite claim to the point of absurdity.

Either they will run and hide or they won't. If they will, then there was no point in you saying that that it isn't in the lore. If they won't, then you are suiciding them. Which is it? Will they run and hide against an overwhelming force or suicide?

 

[Maxperson]

Vikings were willing to travel weeks to reach a raiding spot.

Therefore monsters would be willing to travel two or three days to reach a raiding spot.

Says who? Monsters =/= Vikings. They have different wants and desires. Why would they walk 3 days into a territory where they are more likely to die, than raid a border farm where they live?s