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

[Chaosmancer]

Well actually, he doesn't. There has been a fundamental avoidance of a core real world logic issue. What do these mighty dwarf warriors EAT?

Anyone who has ever played a CIV type game knows that food production is just as important as combat, and a unit with +10% agriculture is as valuable as a unit with +10% defence.

If you want to ty and apply real world logic, it needs to be applied fairly across all races, no exceptions for short beardy people.

I don't make exceptions for dwarves. I actually put quite a bit of thought into their diet. More so than for most other races, because of where they live.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Yeah, funny how gnomes have relatively powerful spellcasters just assumed while halflings must set up their communities on the fringes of society in the middle of an open plain only protected by a hedge row. I mean, it's not like a bard with college of creation could just have large rocks animate and walk around to disguise the trail leading into the village or something. Assuming they needed anything more than game trails of course, because we all know that you need carts because halflings are known for setting up trade empires selling peppers grown in their magical greenhouses because they're inherently greedy and must import food because they can't grow their own.

Almost as if the books specifically said "Gnomes are master of illusion magic" while not telling us that halflings have a strong tradition of College of Creation bards, and instead said "they are farmers"

 

[Gammadoodler]

What about my assumptions was silly?

That forests must be either cleared or grown for a village to be hidden inside of it?

That an underground road would appear like a cave if discovered, and lead straight to the village if followed?

That creatures known for living in the wilderness and finding caves and castles in said wilderness might go over a hill instead of following a road? Might travel through a forest enough to find 50 acres of it replaced with a village?



Yes, I am going off book for humans. I am a human, I think that if humans were supposed to be radically different from humans, they would have told us.

I'm not going off book for dwarves or elves though. So why should I have to go off book for halflings?

Your primary silly assumption was that you have any kind of authoritative knowledge of fantasy agriculture.

 

[Chaosmancer]

False. She is a goddess of agriculture, but nowhere in her write-up does it say she does that same thing.

So, the goddess of agriculture doesn't improve agriculture?

He makes light, dude. He doesn't inhabit the plants to make them better for humans.

He is also a god of Agriculture, summer and Time.

Again, God of Agriculture, therefore he should be improving agriculture, right?

Quote me where the deity spread him or herself out to inhabit the plants to make them better for their race. I quoted it for Halflings. Can you do so for any of these gods?

Aaaaaaand another False Equivalence. I didn't just show a god with "plant magic." I quoted where she actually spread herself out into the plants of the Halflings specifically to provide more for the Halflings.

So, again, Halfling gods and Goddesses just interfere more in the world than the other gods and goddesses. Because halflings are just super blessed by the gods.

Yondalla keeps them safe from attack
Sheela provide them with more food than other races
Charmalaine scouts ahead for adventurers and warns them of danger

And the other dieties for non-halflings just sit up in the celestial realms doing nothing?

 

[Chaosmancer]

Nawp! We're also told that they have other crafts and help each other out with them. You keep repeating that as if it were true, despite being repeatedly told and shown differently. Why is that?

But you are being disingenuous each and every time you say that Halflings are farmers and that's it.

Then what crafting are halflings famous for?

Just "other things"?

 

[tetrasodium]

I said in my synopsis that halflings were content to "trade with those visitors and occasionally with the nearest "big city"" This would imply that the nearest big city knows about the halfling village. If the halflings don't have cities (or even towns) then that must mean that its mainly populated by some other race, meaning some other group knows about the halflings.

Indeed you did. That means a bandit has a map & maybe even a guide who went there before making bandits & intelligent monsters even more of an issue if the shire doesn't have someone providing security for them too

It's not a given fact that this would mean that a kingdom (lets assume the "big city" is human ran) would have already attempted to take over or control the halfling village, either by force, threat, or weight of diplomacy. You are making this assumption because of how things happened in actual Earth real-world history. But, my campaign world doesn't follow actual Earth real-world history because its not Earth, it has many many sentient races (all with competing goals), and even something as simple as a romanlike empire would be different in the world depending on if the empire was Human, Elf, Dwarf, Hobgoblin, or Fae.

The lord of that city doesn't need to take over the halfling shire by force, that's likely the least effective way. Simply making it known to bandits & intelligent monsters that getting caught doing badstuff on lands loyal to the lord is punished severely and that the shire is not loyal to the lord. From there he just needs to wait until the shire comes asking for help to save them from the bandits & monsters. History is full of examples where bandits & other unsavory are driven across the border by a more powerful "nation"(or whatever) until someone important enough comes asking for a liberator.

This isn't a matter of real world verses some fictional world. We are still talking about human nature which is why so many things happened in our world as they did. Plenty of races in d&d are basically fantasy rubber forehead aliens, but on this issue halflings force other races into the realm of starfish aliens with no real excuse or reasoning for it other than to protect the inclusion of the shire as the exclusive halfling representation in the phb.

So, again, my world has areas that are peaceful,

I run most of my games in eberron or something eberron-like. Not only is it at peace it's pretty unique in the fact that there is laws & law enforcement in most of the world. Shire halflings opt-out to form John Galt's paradise & somehow it just works out because it's the shire

and one of those definitions is "not under the strain of takeover by another force".

Bandits, bears, a pack of blink dogs/hellhounds/winterwolves, & even that nutty necromancer's stray zombies being sent that way to get another body are all "another force". The city lord could have them taken care of without too much extra investment, but chasing them off his lands is even easier. The shire halflings are not setup to handle all of those other forces driven from across the lands loyal to the city lord towards the shire.

It's not "plot armor" to me to make this so, its just how my world works.

I'm pretty sure you aren't claiming to be the author of fr/greyhawk, the way your world works is not especially relevant to what the phb lays out for everyone else.

I do have areas on my map that we have been calling "death worlds". Areas where it is dangerous to venture, much less try to settle. Those areas also, naturally in my opinion, don't have much settlement going on because nobody wants to live where the orcs go raiding or the manticores go feeding or the demons emerge from underground rifts. It's also the areas you wouldn't find any non-adventuring halflings (unless they were dinner).

again we are talking about the phb shire halflings not your world

As far as your real world description of rural America...you are describing human behavior...which i'm fine with and not arguing about existing. If I were to ascribe one word to human cultures in D&D it would be AMBITIOUS.

and yet the halfling lands get drawn on the map & those humans elves/dwarves all shrug it off like they were children playing the floor is lava

They are usually depicted as a "young" race yet usually have some of the most powerful civilizations, and in some cases have become the most powerful race on the continent. This is why Youthful Human 1 is likely leave the farm life for the big city so they can get rich and own a trading empire. Being CONTENT may be why Youthful Halfling 1 is fine with moving into a new house next door to ma & pa and raising some goats.

It's not just humans that this affects. I'm pretty sure it was you who went on & on about how dwarves don't have a tradition of farming or logging as opposed to their tradition of mining crafting trading & military service. Why do they also ignore the halfling shire between them & the citylord when they could just be doing the same thing as the citylord to carve up that prime bit of productive farmland

It might be interesting to have a personal conversation about this one day sitting around a table. One thing I have noticed (in real life, not just this thread or board) is that it is more difficult for some people to grok the state of CONTENT than others. Some, like myself, can get to a point where they say to themselves "What I have now is pretty good, as long as things stay this way i'll be happy" and others are always striving to earn, learn, or achieve more. Perhaps my personality type of being CONTENT in my life lets me view the idea of a whole race of CONTENT people as not being any sort of issue??? Regardless, that's a different (and probably IRL) discussion.

It's not a matter of being able to grok the excuses. The excuses only work in FR or FR-like worlds that also impose cultural stasis as a norm nobody tries to change with advancements.

 

[Chaosmancer]

But "better" is always going to be subjective and can (even should) vary from campaign to campaign. Same with all the races for that matter.

The devs can't possibly build a version of any race that will fit all campaigns. Which is not to say that things couldn't be improved. For example in MToF instead of "throwing rocks" why not just say they use slings? Slings can be quite deadly, they cost next to nothing to make, they're ranged so they use dex.

But that's such a nitpicky little thing that I can insert into my game along with the fact that they're famous for their "smallwork" and intricately detailed fine crafts for when they do need to trade.

If people want to share how they tweak halflings (or any other race), awesome! I enjoy hearing ideas. I just get tired of people picking one tiny thread and blow it all out of proportion and context to say that "they don't work" and end it at that.

I've shared my tweaks a few times.

I made them nomads, caravaners and entertainers. They travel around, keeping an eye out for trouble. They stop by towns and crossroads, trade hand-made goods and put on shows. They enjoy good food and family, their home is simply mobile. They also tend to have crossbows and other weapons to keep them safe if they run into trouble on the road, but they avoid a lot of trouble by constantly moving and keeping vigilant while out in the wilds. Since many of their entertaining skills also can apply to defense, and they make sure to practice practical skills to keep themselves and others safe, I feel it works out quite well.

 

[David Howery]

Kobolds are happy to hate anyone and everyone.

in 1E and 2E, they had a special hate-on for gnomes. Something to do with their gods mixing it up, IIRC, kinda like orcs and elves....

 

[Chaosmancer]

So in conclusions Haflings are an issue for people who can look at the descriptions and extrapolate problems but either can't extrapolate solutions or alternatives, or won't do so for some strange reason of principle?

Or is it that people want people to acknowledge that if you take all these assumptions and add them together they don't make sense rather than going either "Why are you making such assumptions? Or hmmm, I see, but if you add the following to your set of assumptions than we don't have a problem"

For people who don't extrapolate the problems, or who keep extrapolating until they have solutions to problems, there is nothing to be concerned about.

The odd thing here is I would have thought that the people who would even come up with these issues would be people who enjoy worldbuilding - and that if worldbuilding is something you enjoy then....

Yes, I fixed it for me. I can repeat it for an 8th time if you would like.

I homebrewed Halflings and fixed them for my games.

I homebrewed Halflings and fixed them for my games.

But, I had to homebrew halflings and fix them for my games, because there were things we were told about halflings that just don't work. Or, I made the same assumptions for all of my races, and then was told that I am out to erase halflings because I hate them.

In my world you would be very hard pressed to find a village or town without a palisade and a handful of guards. Even the safest places have been known to get attacked by cults, undead or demons, let alone some of the other threats that are out there. I was told that was bad of me, because it makes halflings into something they aren't.

I assume that everyone trades. Trade shaped the world, and so it has to be important to a fantasy world. Trade is incredibly dangerous, that is partially why paid mercenary work exists, because caravan guard duty is a pretty common gig, and either you are hired by the trading company, a merchant, or the government. It does make a few things more expensive, if I ever got my economic system finally ironed out, but there is also the sheer amount of practical magic that can be leveraged. Very rich trading companies use Teleportation Circles, for example, which can allow instant transportation of goods daily.


But again, just because I came up with all of these solutions, doesn't mean that the problems I have pointed out to fix don't exist. Just because I can give halflings leather armor and crossbows and say that they have a force of rangers who protect them from monster attacks doesn't mean that the book tells me they just get a few "good ol' country boys" and hit monsters with sticks to drive them off.

 

[Maxperson]

So, the goddess of agriculture doesn't improve agriculture?

Show me where it says she does as much as the Halfling goddess.