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

[Maxperson]

Then explain how being naturally stealthy and being able to hide behind larger creatures allows you to hide an orchard. Orchards are not naturally stealthy, and they don't have a lot of things larger than them to hide behind. So, how do those traits help hide the orchard?

Again, you don't need to hide it. Just being in an out of the way place means that 99.99% of everyone is not going to encounter it. Especially in a world of the D&D tech level. You don't just wander overland to get places. You take roads.

 

[Chaosmancer]

One year my wife and I grew a dill plant in our kitchen. Over the course of a single year, our little single plant (growing in a coffee mug sized pot) produced enough dill for us to dry and use for several years. Theoretically our two next door neighbors could grow some other singular succulent and we could trade amongst ourselves and turn one singular plant each into 3 separate year supply of some lesser used herbs.

Assuming halflings were know for cooking, it's entirely reasonable to have 20 houses growing 10 plants each and producing a veritable smorgasbord of goodies to trade around for the year. Then, some random trip to the "big city" has a farmer discover something new and they bring it back to the village introducing a new flavor for everyone. 10 pots on the windowsill....that's the real estate it would take to outfit the entire community with whatever they needed.

Okay...

How does this prevent a dill farmer from growing dill?

How does 20 houses of halflings in the shire growing dill in the windowsill work, but a hundred households growing dill in the windowsill in the human town not work?


Because the point was, if there are these easily grown, local spice plants that every halfling village could use... then humans could use them too. And then the humans wouldn't need to trade as much either. So how does your story of dill in the windowsill prevent humans from growing dill in the windowsill, or by having one guy buy a house and grow multiple pots of dill for the whole town?

 

[Gammadoodler]

Then explain how being naturally stealthy and being able to hide behind larger creatures allows you to hide an orchard. Orchards are not naturally stealthy, and they don't have a lot of things larger than them to hide behind. So, how do those traits help hide the orchard?

Orchards also don't fit in a 5ft cube, and last longer than a minute.

 

[Maxperson]

Because the point was, if there are these easily grown, local spice plants that every halfling village could use... then humans could use them too. And then the humans wouldn't need to trade as much either. So how does your story of dill in the windowsill prevent humans from growing dill in the windowsill, or by having one guy buy a house and grow multiple pots of dill for the whole town?

Humans are more numerous and do many different things. You aren't going to see 100 households in a human town growing dill. Food isn't as important to them(other than survival) as it is to Halflings.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Gods are good to have on your side.

Yep, too bad no other god takes this level of interest, nor can they do anything about Yondalla's interference

It matters because of the Halfling mindset. A people who occasionally swap some sandals for some pepper are different from a people who trade sandals for coins. Money corrupts.

No. Now you are taking a moral stance on a tool. You might as well say "swords make you violent".

Greed corrupts, but greed existed long before coins and money did.

I just pulled that number out because of the Two-Week Viking raids. The village the Halfling is in could be 2 days travel, 2 weeks travel or 2 months travel away. However far it was, I didn't say it was close enough to run home for dinner with the parents. I just said that given Halfling wanderlust, he'd want to travel home to give the news to the parents himself AND get some of mom's cooking while he's there.

But that is completely beside the point. You are declaring that they don't send mail because they just walk home. That is so beyond the pale I don't have words for it.

So, either they can send mail, and thus someone needs to know how to get the mail too them

Or they can't send mail, and thus if they want to talk to the people back home, they need to walk however far it is to get home to talk to them.

 

[tetrasodium]

From Merriam Webster
Sneaky: marked by stealth, furtiveness, or shiftiness.

Almost like there's some kind of relationship between being sneaky and being marked by stealth here.

That would be why I said "an adjective often involving the use of that skill.". being sneaky is rarely useful to a farmer blacksmith seamstress mason carpenter & so on. Investing time in learning even a small amount of magic or basic artificer type applied skills however will frequently be something capable of assisting in those things....

But yes, let's please do base our case on imaginary professions and semantics.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Magical greenhouses are a thing. An entire layer of Undermountain is a forest. I'm not saying Halflings would have them, but a village might, if it had a Halfling Wizard adventurer retired there or did a favor for a Wizard at some point.

So, we are now adding magical greenhouses made by retired wizards on top of the special magical plants made by archdruids and the interference of the gods.

All to prevent halflings from trading, like every other race.

Do people still not understand why I am so frustrated with this conversation? It seems that people's natural response to halflings maybe having to deal with the outside world is "throw more nice things at them, make them more comfortable, protect them"

 

[Chaosmancer]

And unless those villagers all got together and built their desired menu for the area, with enough to spare to send in trade they would likely only have the crops they could efficiently grow on their land, hell, their collective land, until they went to the market, a trader came in whatever.

As such, their dining options would be similarly limited. In contrast, suffering some inefficiency, but with no need for trade surplus the comparable halfling village can enjoy greater variety.

Wait. Why can the halfling village enjoy greater variety, but the human village would be limited?

The desire to trade is to get things you can't otherwise get. If everyone can just grow enough to support the entire village in the first place, trade wouldn't be a thing.

Unless you are somehow taking the problem of cash crops from the 1700's, which was driven by incredibly large trade markets which generated excessive wealth, and saying that humans just naturally default to that system by nature. Which... is kind of like Max claiming that money corrupts people. No, that isn't how these things worked. Cash crops came because of massive trade networks, not the other way around.

 

[Chaosmancer]

We haven't even touched the fact that as small 30lb folk, crops would support many more halflings than humans per pound. Perhaps halfling farms are super small compared to human ones which could lead to them being able to hide better?

It was touched upon.

It is in no way supported by the rules, and is an assumption people are adding.

 

[Maxperson]

Yep, too bad no other god takes this level of interest, nor can they do anything about Yondalla's interference

Yep!

No. Now you are taking a moral stance on a tool. You might as well say "swords make you violent".

Greed corrupts, but greed existed long before coins and money did.

Right, because money corrupting isn't a well known phenomenon. Kinda like power.

But that is completely beside the point. You are declaring that they don't send mail because they just walk home. That is so beyond the pale I don't have words for it.

So, either they can send mail, and thus someone needs to know how to get the mail too them

Or they can't send mail, and thus if they want to talk to the people back home, they need to walk however far it is to get home to talk to them.

Or...................they don't send mail. Or.....................if they do it's another Halfling. Or..........

There's no need to reveal the town to all the hordes of nastiness hanging out in the safe areas of country that wander through nowhere land looking for poor Halflings instead of going to rich Human towns.