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

[Oofta]

I am just saying that for halflings, I must ponder another step. Another step which I don't have to go for humans, dwarves, elves,half elves, half orcs, gnomes, dragonborn, nor tieflings. And to me that is weird.

I'm not saying that I can't make halfling work. I am saying that I shouldn't still have to do extra work for the 4th most iconic race five editions and over 40 years in.

So I guess I'm just not seeing what extra work you need to do. They leaned into The Hobbit a little too much (but then ignored the rogue aspect) for my tastes, that doesn't invalidate them.

As a group they don't care about kingdoms, conquest, glory or power. They are the happy-go-lucky adventurer that doesn't let anything get them down. It's as much as you get with most races.

 

[Mecheon]

I'm not saying that I can't make halfling work. I am saying that I shouldn't still have to do extra work for the 4th most iconic race five editions and over 40 years in.

Well, I got good news on their 'iconic' status. As per that D&D Beyond character bit, halflings are at half-orc levels of being rolled and ages below Tiefling and Dragonborn. Struth, even Goliaths got above them at a point.

So, what that says about them being 'iconic' I'll leave up to everyone

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Now we are going to mythology? When dwarves and elves arevery removed from their mythological roots? And the D&D versions of dwarves, elves, gnomes, and orcs are the ones commonly copied?

But I am glad people are beginning to state how the D&D halfling has little crossover appealas it struggles to adapt to a setting outside of Middle Earth. And that it is so one-note that it's cukture and roles are very easy to replace with other race outside of D&D.

Putting words in people’s mouths is incredibly rude.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Can't we just say that halfling villages look the way they do because D&D fans want them to look like hobbit shires? However neither halfling villages as described in most D&D books of the default settings not hobbit shires make sense in the default D&D setting. So either we admit they make no sense to preserve the trope or we alter halflings to the point that they start to resemble either short humans or a monstrous race.

No. They may not make sense in your campaigns. That has no impact on the rest of us.

 

[Minigiant]

So I guess I'm just not seeing what extra work you need to do. They leaned into The Hobbit a little too much (but then ignored the rogue aspect) for my tastes, that doesn't invalidate them.

As a group they don't care about kingdoms, conquest, glory or power. They are the happy-go-lucky adventurer that doesn't let anything get them down. It's as much as you get with most races.

I didn't say it invalidate halflings.
I said from the very beginning that D&D leaned on halfling's hobbit side too hard and did too little to fit them in a base assumption that isn't Middle Earth's. Therefore halflings feel a bit out of place and this should not be the case for one of the four iconic races.

Then I speculated that this slight disconnect is why halflings are not found in major roles of nonD&D games that copy many D&D tropes. And now apperantely,@Mecheon states that halflings are dropping down hard popularity within the fandom as well.

I just want halfling to fit D&D's fantasy assumption more so more DMs would use them, more players will play them, and more designers will put them on the main stage. Idon't want halflings to be a tradition include that no one actually uses in 30 years because it's trapped in a hobbit cage.

 

[Don Durito]

I still don't understand the issue. You feel halfllings as hobbits don't make sense? Make them something slightly different that does make sense?

It's D&D. It doesn't come with a setting. It comes with some optional bland fluff. Just use your option.

Making the races cohere with your understanding of how the setting works is entirely up to you.

 

[Minigiant]

No. They may not make sense in your campaigns. That has no impact on the rest of us.

Adding information not said or mentioned about the race to the race to make it fit the setting is making sense of the race.

If the game strips out base assumptions ot of halflings and you the gamer must add new aspects back into halflings to fit your campaign, then it didn't fit before.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Therefore asa D&D fan, for default halflings to work, you have to not think that hard about it

Oooor, not imagine the world as under so much constant attack that agrarian societies can't form independent of naughty words what give themselves crowns for stabbing people.

I get that we like our monsters and our bandits marauding 24/7, but humans have managed to agriculture thousands of years before feudalism, back in time where there were actual megafauna running around and your neighbors might be still in the hunter-gatherer phase and thing stabbing you, taking your stuff and inventing the crown was a good idea.

And in the end, Peaceful Farmer has outlasted Chief, Pharaoh, King and Warlod as the a job title.

You don't have to be a badass to not die constantly unless you're on maximum death-world settings. Humans and human-adjacent creatures are pretty good at that.

 

[Oofta]

Adding information not said or mentioned about the race to the race to make it fit the setting is making sense of the race.

If the game strips out base assumptions ot of halflings and you the gamer must add new aspects back into halflings to fit your campaign, then it didn't fit before.

Except they do work for most people with just the base assumptions. If they don't work for you, that's a personal problem. No game can be everything for everyone. There's plenty of lore from previous editions and campaigns that you can import.

Or just don't use them.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Okay, look.

Let's just be clear what the real message of this thread is:

Halflings are not 'good' only if the following things are true.

You have hand tailored your world so they can't survive.
You purposefully interpret lack of fluff in some places to mean hallfings are literally defenseless while ignoring similar holes of other races.
You as DM, being literal overgod of the world just plain don't like halflings.

Like it is VERY tiring sitting her watching this worldbuilding exercise masquerading as a discussion on Flavor as Written. Yes, you can absolutely create a world that specifically destroys baseline PH halflings on demand while mysteriously letting everyone else live. Congratulations. Can we tailor build a world that destroys Raptorians now? I hate those guys.

I haven't tailored anything.

I also am not only referring to a lack of fluff, but explicitly listed fluff. Why am I supposed to ignore that the fluff tells us that they use rocks and sticks to defend themselves? What purpose does ignoring that serve except to highlight that it is a bit absurd to expect that to work.

And, I'm not ignoring holes in other races, at least not in terms of defense. Elves and dwarves are explicitly given ways to defend themselves, gnomes are well explained, dragonborn have excellent defense in their breath weapons, and while humans don't have anything explicit, they have much that we take for granted.

Of course their are human soldiers, they have kingdoms, trade routes, caravan guards, they are modeled after the real world and assuming that the king has guards doesn't change anything about the lore that is written. Sure, maybe you could argue that elves have no way to support their populations food needs, I'm sure we could tear into that, but the problem with halflings is a bit more troublesome.

Because if elves need food, well, they live in forests which means hunting and gathering is quite possible, and they have trade relations with other kingdoms, so they can buy what else they may need. They also have a magical tradition which could lend itself to magical solutions to lack of food. None of that is written, but none of that contradicts anything we know about elves.

Do halflings trade? I've been told both yes and no. If no, they have a problem. If yes, they have a different problem, which is that the defenses we are told they have aren't adequate. Except for "Their Goddess makes them lucky and actively protects them" which starts causing other believeability problems in the setting. And we can assume they have different defenses, but then we are directly contradicting the lore we have been provided with.

And I don't want to get rid of halflings. I find them near useless for my purposes, but I still put them in my world and fixed the problems with the lore. I have no problem with people doing that. I just take objection to the fact that people refuse to acknowledge that this lore has way too many plotholes.