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

[Maxperson]

Then what crafting are halflings famous for?

Just "other things"?

Who said anything about famous, Mr. Strawman? I just said that they have other crafts, which is a fact.

 

[Chaosmancer]

You find practical camouflage unbelievable but a little guy literally handwaving a village away from sight and, I suppose, memory permanently to be logical.

Here's what it comes down to. D&D settings are fictional. Any political, botanical, economic, scientific, philosophic, or whatever other baggage you want to bring in from real life, you've chosen to carry on your own back. If that baggage prevents you from believing a thing, it's on you.

Practical Camouflage?

You mentioned them hiding an entire village and their farms and their farm animals with "earthworks". It can't be a wall, because I suggested walls and was told to stop making halflings militant. So, you are talking about building a hill.

Yes, that is a thing people have done. No, I wouldn't call it practical.

You mentioned them hiding behind trees. Well, to be a thick enough set of trees, it would need to be a forest yes? Otherwise when that group of bandits steps off the road into the trees to lay an ambush, they'll step right into the halfling village.

So, either they grow their own forest, or they find one. The 50 acres was a measurement for being able to have houses and "large farms" for 50 halflings. 50 acres is a lot of forest to clear. They can't just have farms without clearing the forest, the trees would prevent the crops from growing. And, when we know groups like goblins and orcs travel through forests and take up residence in abandoned castles, how does being in the forest protect the halflings? Sure, maybe they grow a thick wall of ivy and bushes to make going into their part of the forest nearly impossible... but how thick would it have to be? How deep in the forest are they if they still need to leave occasionally to trade with people for goods?


You accuse me of bringing too much baggage, but you seem to just want to declare "Earthworks!" and I'm suppsoed to nod and say "ah yes, of course that camoflauge could hide them" without pressing for how you think that is going to prevent a goblin from climbing a hill and seeing them.

 

[Chaosmancer]

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

Ah yes, assuming plants still grow in climates is so silly of me. I forgot, magic means that the world doesn't have rules.

 

[Chaosmancer]

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

I love how you assume that is the problem. I posted three different things in that post, and you want me to find you explicit proof that the Goddess of Agriculture for humans does just as much to help agriculture as the halfling Goddess of Agriculture.

When my problem is in fact that you are assuming she does more.

What makes the halflings so special that they get so much direct divine intervention?

Who said anything about famous, Mr. Strawman? I just said that they have other crafts, which is a fact.

So, you have no idea other than "other crafts"

Well, humans have "other crafts" to, therefore they must be able to use practical camoflauge to perfectly hide their villages, right?

 

[Oofta]

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.

Your world appears to be far more dangerous than the baseline assumption. Which is fine. But that doesn't mean there's an inherent issue with halfling in any campaign other than yours.

In my world, halflings do trade with the outsider world just not as much as most humans would. So they might send traders out to get supplies they can't get themselves like iron ore for the manufacture of new tools, some things like alchemical and medical supplies, maybe some spices they can't grow on their own and so on. But unlike humans there is no "keeping up with the Joneses". They don't care about jewelry, fine clothing or doo-dads, the furniture they can make is just fine thank you very much. Then again there are trader/tinkerer traveling halflings which of course know where the villages are on their route.

As far as defenses, they primarily rely on slings and instead of walls they have hobbit holes and secret tunnels. Since they have little of value they can easily flee and set up somewhere else. Occasionally a retired adventurer (who are frequently bards) will retire in a town as well, or travel from town to town offering services in return for a good meal, stories around the table and a place to sleep the night.

But I don't understand the obsession with them not being able to defend themselves. Yes, they use sticks and stones. That's all most small villages will have in most worlds.

 

[Oofta]

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"

Gnomes innately have minor illusion which covers a 5 ft cube and lasts a minute. If you're assuming that mid-to-high level illusionists can protect gnomes because gnomes are associated to illusionists, I can assume mid-to-high level bards can protect halflings because halflings are associated to bards.

There's no way a cantrip that lasts a single minute is going to make much of a difference unless half the population does nothing but cast cantrips 24X7. So choose. Mid-to-high level NPCs aid in protecting their brethren or they don't. If they do, my bard animating objects is fine and so is your illusionist buddy. If not then neither one happens.

 

[Maxperson]

I love how you assume that is the problem. I posted three different things in that post, and you want me to find you explicit proof that the Goddess of Agriculture for humans does just as much to help agriculture as the halfling Goddess of Agriculture.

You were the one who equated them to her. It's on you to prove the equivalence or concede that she does more for Halflings than they do for their followers.

What makes the halflings so special that they get so much direct divine intervention?

Not my problem. They get it. That's what we have.

So, you have no idea other than "other crafts"

I have specifically mentioned the ones that they specifically mentioned, but they also implied other crafts and that those crafts were enough for the village to function.

Well, humans have "other crafts" to, therefore they must be able to use practical camoflauge to perfectly hide their villages, right?

Wow! A Strawman(I never said that) and a False Equivalence(equating skills to their luck and divine aid) in one sentence. You're outdoing yourself today.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

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....

If Kurtulmak doesn't have a sense of humor, that's on him.

 

[Minigiant]

The funny thing for me.

If halflings were a minor race. Like at the tier of hobgoblins or kobolds, I wouldn't care.

But it is halflings being the 4th most numerous and important race in the baseline assumption that gets me. I don't get how a standard bearer race is treated this way.

But I do get it somewhat since from 0e to 2e, halflings were treated as a joke race and a walking meme. Many OSR make halfling kinda suck. Small races were nerfed to hell. So the attraction to many of the races was not about seriousness but about charm. tropes, and innocence. One could speculate that if your focus was there, you wouldn't focus on how halflings mange to hide every safe spot on the continent and outbreed the minor races.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

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.

I really don't know how much clearer I can be about it. In my world halflings live in places that don't have to worry about bandits and monsters because there are no bandits or monsters in that area to seek them out.

Everyone's D&D campaign is their own world. I have my own map with my own placenames, but I use the Forgotten Realms pantheon and the stock racial descriptors from the official 5e book as how my various groups interact in the world (with a few exceptions like hobgoblins and orcs not being evil, and bullywugs being comic relief and peaceful). Even if I was running as close to stock FR as I possibly could, if I had to slot in a halfling shire it wouldn't change the fact that I would then consider it to have been founded in an area that doesn't have to worry about bandits/monsters.