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

[TwoSix]

My experience is that people run stereotypical characters until they've seen most of the stereotypes they are willing to play at their table. The desire to brake the mold usually comes with exposure to the mold.

Anecdotal, of course, but my experience mirrors @Maxperson. People generally like to play something somewhat against type. Halflings end up as either psychotic warrior types or creepy casters. Dwarves are generally jolly casters. Elves are....well, considering there's an elf for everything, it's actually pretty hard to play an elf against type.

 

[Maxperson]

Evil PCs are not the norm.

If you are running an evil game, straight drow is a staple mold.

Good heavens. No. The best thing you can do if you're evil is get into a good group. The suckers will take care of you like there's no tomorrow.

I've been in evil campaigns, but more often the group is mixed good, neutral and sometimes evil. As long as you aren't playing evil as psychotically insane, it works out well enough. Most mixed groups have issues because the player of the evil PC doesn't know how to play evil.

 

[Bohandas]

I think to a degree it goes further than that. A lot of things about fr are so laden with plot armor protecting layer upon layer of plot armor that it goes from incongruities in the setting to affecting free will and motivations in ways that make "these are not the droids you're looking for" a positively unremarkable demonstration of clear headed free will played out on a global scale.

I think somebody ought to take that and roll with it. Have that be literally what's happening. Like in They Live or Dark City or The Matrix or Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagaan some vast force is at work manipulating things to keep the multiverse static. There's definitely an epic conspiray plotline to be made out of that, likely something to do with the Regulators or the Pact Primeval or the Inevitables or all three.

 

[Chaosmancer]

False Dichotomies are false. There are average goods, fair quality goods, good quality goods. Things don't have to be fine or poor.

Right, so your entire problem is that I said "fine" assuming halflings made things of value.

I guess they only make average quality goods. You want fine goods you go to a different race of people.

False Equivalences are still false. The lore says that Deep Gnomes owe their innate magical abilities to Baravar and those abilities from that feat are the only innate abilities Deep Gnomes have. Therefore there are Deep Gnomes that have them even if PCs don't have access to that feat.

You can choose to assume whatever you like about Wood Elves and Pass Without Trace. There is no assumption with Deep Gnomes and their innate abilities. We know for a fact that they have them unless you house rule it to be otherwise.

PCs don't have them.

Therefore not all Deep Gnomes would have them.

That seems to very neatly counteract your point, unless you want to say that PCs are special somehow, outside the norm, which then raises a lot of questions about whether or not all halflings have Brave, or just the PCs.

And it still doesn't address the point that you want to accuse me of not including a feat for Deep Gnomes, which were not talked about at all until you brought them in.

More False Equivalences from you! You never fail to disappoint on the fallacy front.

You were assuming that feats were allowed to PCs. I outright said that this happens per RAW even if no feats are allowed(because it does). One situation(your assumption of feats being used) is not equal to the other(My not assuming feats are being used).

I'm sorry, humans can have feats per raw right?

And,even if they don't do you know what they can do? They can train with weapons. Training rules apply to everyone. So they would have that whether you have feats or not.

And, what did you do again? Oh right, you accused me of false equivalences. Just like you are doing now.

Or for ducks sake. I thought you said you read Mordenkainen's. If you haven't, just admit it.

"Forest gnomes and deep gnomes owe their innate magical abilities to Baravar, and all gnomes get their natural defense against magic from her shrewdness."

It doesn't get any clearer than that.

Really? Really?

So... If I teach you how to build a car, you would owe that knowledge to me, as your teacher right? So... they "owe" their innate magical abilties to him. Could be because he taught the gnomes magic and they used it so much it has become innate to them.

You know how I think that happened? Because I read Mordenkainen's, the thing you always accuse me of not doing for some reason. For specifc example, you quoted the first sentence in the second paragraph of the entry of Baravar Cloakshadow.

If you had bothered to read the first sentence of the first paragraph of the entry of Baravar Cloakshadow, then you would have seen this "When gnomes arrived in the world, Baravar protected them by teaching them how to hide, use magic, and deceive their foes."

Its okay, you can admit you didn't read that they were actually taught, which is the real thing it says.

I didn't see that. Do you have a quote from him?

Sure, I can do your reading for you. Here is his most recent, I believe one of his first replies to me also stated it, and he said it a few other times, but I'm not making you a list.

They don’t make a mockery of martial traditions, that’s a nonsense argument that’s been debunked multiple times in this thread. (And also comes from a purely optional “hot take” oriented supplement that is full of nonsense regarding every race it talks about).

---

Your ability to get what people say correct is somewhere in the neighborhood(not quite there) of 0%. Unless you can give me a quote, I'm not going to believe this claim of yours.

Hey look a quote!

And I was right about Gnomes being taught. And I was right about Oofta's quote of goods. And I was right about what Sabathius said. And I was right about Paul Farquar throwing me a gotcha question.

Dang, for 0% that sure is a lot.

Yes. Silly you. I'm not responsible for you falsely equating town guards, of which there are few and are less trained than soldiers, to soldiers. I don't make that sort of false equivalence. If I say soldiers, I mean actual soldiers. If I'm talking about guards, I say guards. If I say militia, then I'm talking about commoners trained with some easy to use weapons(simple in 5e terms), which is what a militia was.

And I'm righting dozens of replies in the space of hours, in-between working with students and on a timeline before my live write.

Maybe instead of just finger pointing and screaming "You dum, I didn't say that" and forcing me to waste time finding the quotes of you, you could do your point in this conversation with something like "Soldiers wouldn't work, but I could see town guards" since I've said all three at various points.

Aaaaaaand another Strawman of my position. I have reversed nothing and still insist that Halflings know many crafts. I have not said and never have said that they are purveyors of fine goods. I said that they can knit, make shoes, blacksmith, etc. so that the village can survive with their small numbers.

It's amazing how different descriptors make things different. After all, that Louis Vuitton bag is the same as the one you got from Walmart.

Right, clearly it is all about quality. Raiders known for rarely bathing and wearing rotted furs are going to care that a ceramic teapot is just of average quality instead of a fine quality.

Those darn picky raiders who sleep in filth and garbage. (and yes, goblins are almost always depicted as sleeping in filth and garbage. I'm not going to bother providing you evidence, you can go grab a copy of phandolin or mad mage yourself to read descriptions of goblin camps)

 

[Chaosmancer]

So you home brewed your halflings because they didn't work in your world. You fixed them for your world. Cool. Why so intent on insisting that halflings are bad in everyone else's campaign? They work just fine as written for many people. Your campaign seems to be far more dangerous than many, it's not reasonable to assume your world is a default in any way shaper or form.

Your obsession with one line in the entire write-up is just odd. Most commoners in a small farming village are not going to have real weapons, the line about sticks and stones shows how they make coordinated attacks with what they have on hand. They aren't PCs, they don't have to kill the ogre, just drive it off. In addition the saying "Sticks and stones may break my bones..." is literal. You're focus on 1% of the write-up to say their horrible.

The default halfling is a race that exemplifies the pastoral ideal. In your world if all commoners in small farming villages are armed to the teeth then halflings should be armed similarly. But the standard default assumption? Small farming villages would not have significant weaponry. If the threat is greater than they can deal with they'll do what everyone else has ever done, ask for help, develop additional defenses or flee.

Meanwhile you continue to ignore the difficulty people have finding the village in the first place. While they don't clearly explain it, it's clearly supernatural. There doesn't have to be an explanation for it any more than there needs to be an explanation of how dragons fly and breath fire.

I keep insisting that there are real problems, because people keep accusing me of things.

I've been accused of lacking reading comprehension
Of twisting words
Of hating halflings
Of strawmen
Of not reading books that I own and have read
Of lying
Of being a hypocrite
Of hating hope and wanting everything to be grim dark and death

And yet, despite it all, the issues I pointed out exist.

Sure, sticks and stones can break the bones of humans when thrown by other humans. Are halflings as strong as humans? Are Ogre bones as weak as humans? I think I know what your answers would be if you were honest about it.

And yes, as I have said "the gods did it" is a weak excuse for why no one can find halfling villages. I find it to be poor story telling and in fact, it is something lambasted in the Drow race constantly, how they only exist because Lolth props them up and intervenes.

Well, Hallfings are propped up by their gods, only continue to exist because they are constantly interveneing, but that's fine because they live a pastoral ideal that was never real?

It was brought up by @Minigiant many times that halflings are treated differently than any other race, what better proof than the fact that they are bubble wrapped by their gods to live in a pastoral paradise untouched by the wider world? That is their default position, an idyllic paradise where they spend most of their time lazying in the sun (yes Mordenkainen's, the book @Maxperson thinks I've never read has an entire part about how they turn idleness into an art form, you know, these farm folk who are completely self-sufficient, being idle as an art form) and never worrying or risking anything.

Meanwhile, everyone else fights against the darkness in the world. They fight the demons, the devils, aberrations, warlords, for every other race in existence, they defend their moments of peace fiercely. Halflings are given peace on a rustic platter.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Did they now?
And you are using those arguments to me because you believe them, and thus they are your opinions too??

No, my point was to highlight the fact that I'm tired of getting hit from all sides here. I can't engage eight different positions, because then people use my words against one position to show that I'm wrong about something else.

I'm tired of getting pulled in a dozen directions to have halflings have whatever the person who wants to call me a hypocritical ludite needs to show how bad faith my arguments are.

 

[Maxperson]

Right, so your entire problem is that I said "fine" assuming halflings made things of value.

I guess they only make average quality goods. You want fine goods you go to a different race of people.

"Fine" implies a level of greed that isn't apparent in the lore. They just want to be happy and enjoy life. They don't need Gucci boots when ordinary comfortable boots will do.

PCs don't have them.

Therefore not all Deep Gnomes would have them.

That seems to very neatly counteract your point, unless you want to say that PCs are special somehow, outside the norm, which then raises a lot of questions about whether or not all halflings have Brave, or just the PCs.

That's a fine Red Herring that's entirely irrelevant to whether or not the race has them.

I'm sorry, humans can have feats per raw right?

No. They can only have feats if the DM engages the explicitly optional feat rule. Without the DM engaging that rule, the players can make a million alt-human PCs and not one of them will have a feat.

And, what did you do again? Oh right, you accused me of false equivalences. Just like you are doing now.

Stop engaging in them and I will stop calling you out for them.

So... If I teach you how to build a car, you would owe that knowledge to me, as your teacher right? So... they "owe" their innate magical abilties to him. Could be because he taught the gnomes magic and they used it so much it has become innate to them.

You can't teach innate abilities. They're...........innate. Did your mother teach you how to beat your heart or does it just beat on its own? Your heartbeat is innate. You're ability to write Strawmen here was taught to you.

If you had bothered to read the first sentence of the first paragraph of the entry of Baravar Cloakshadow, then you would have seen this "When gnomes arrived in the world, Baravar protected them by teaching them how to hide, use magic, and deceive their foes."

And then she gave them their innate abilities through divine power. Those are not mutually exclusive things.

Its okay, you can admit you didn't read that they were actually taught, which is the real thing it says.

I read it. Teaching them how to hide =/= innate magic. Teaching them how to cast spells like wizards =/= innate magic. Teaching them how to deceive foes =/= innate magic. Granting them innate magic via divine power = innate magic.

Sure, I can do your reading for you. Here is his most recent, I believe one of his first replies to me also stated it, and he said it a few other times, but I'm not making you a list.

That doesn't say what you think it does. It does seem to imply that he feels Mordenkainen's is crappy. It doesn't say that he wants to limit things to the PHB only.

And I was right about Gnomes being taught. And I was right about Oofta's quote of goods. And I was right about what Sabathius said. And I was right about Paul Farquar throwing me a gotcha question.

You were not right about gnomes being taught their innate magic. I called you out for attributing Oofta's quote to me, and so on.

Dang, for 0% that sure is a lot.

And I will call you out for this misrepresenstation as well. I never said 0%. I said NEAR 0%. You do occasionally get it right.

Right, clearly it is all about quality. Raiders known for rarely bathing and wearing rotted furs are going to care that a ceramic teapot is just of average quality instead of a fine quality.

Raiders raid for wealth, dude. They want the yellow metal and jewels. The ceramic teapot will be ground underfoot while they search for actual loot.

 

[Chaosmancer]

First let me take a moment to point out that when you paraphrased me as saying "set the tone for how all small villages should be viewed" I want to point out that you added the word ALL in there. I generally try to avoid using absolutes, because absolutes make for poor world building. I think its fine to say say that manticores are dangerous monsters, but I would not use the term ALL manticores are dangerous monsters because then I have locked myself out of a plot including a good manticore. Similarly if I see something that says that halflings are content to stay home and get fat, that doesn't mean to me that ALL halflings are content to stay home and get fat. At no point did I say Phandolin is "how all small villages should be viewed" but rather "this is a typical small village as presented by WotC".

Dude, I was typing fast. I wasn't going to accuse you of an absolute. I was just not going to go back a dozen pages to read your exact words.

So, going back to what I said using Phandolin as a topic. Phandolin is presented to players in the beginners box set. Presumably this box set is aimed at new players...so it represents what WotC at some point decided "These are the parts of D&D that we want to showcase to people that might be unfamiliar with D&D and are playing it for the first time.". They include a "starter village" for the PCs to begin their adventuring career in. This is going to influence how players see "small villages" in D&D, and it's a look that WotC have decided represents "D&D" as a brand.

If you definition of "vastly more lethal and fraught with danger" is a group of bandits under the direction of an evil wizard who kill a few townfolk and burn a few buildings down before all being slaughtered by adventurers then our view of the lethality probably differs.

Group of bandits under the direction of an evil wizard who is under the control of a drow squad of spies who are fighting off a large group of undead and other monsters in a mine killed and captured townfolk and burn down some buildings in a town that was just reestablished after being completely wiped out by orcs and abandoned for 500 years.

Those same orcs (the tribe, not specifically the same orcs) are reported to be back at Wyvern's Tor or Wyvern's point, scouting out the town to attack it again.

There is a powerful banshee nearby.

Oh, and there is a second destroyed an abandoned town with a dragon, blights and either explicit Ash Zombies or just remains of ash zombies.

Does two destroyed towns with mutliple deadly threats not sound like "fraught with danger"?

 

[Oofta]

I keep insisting that there are real problems, because people keep accusing me of things.

I've been accused of lacking reading comprehension
Of twisting words
Of hating halflings
Of strawmen
Of not reading books that I own and have read
Of lying
Of being a hypocrite
Of hating hope and wanting everything to be grim dark and death

And yet, despite it all, the issues I pointed out exist.

Sure, sticks and stones can break the bones of humans when thrown by other humans. Are halflings as strong as humans? Are Ogre bones as weak as humans? I think I know what your answers would be if you were honest about it.

And yes, as I have said "the gods did it" is a weak excuse for why no one can find halfling villages. I find it to be poor story telling and in fact, it is something lambasted in the Drow race constantly, how they only exist because Lolth props them up and intervenes.

Well, Hallfings are propped up by their gods, only continue to exist because they are constantly interveneing, but that's fine because they live a pastoral ideal that was never real?

It was brought up by @Minigiant many times that halflings are treated differently than any other race, what better proof than the fact that they are bubble wrapped by their gods to live in a pastoral paradise untouched by the wider world? That is their default position, an idyllic paradise where they spend most of their time lazying in the sun (yes Mordenkainen's, the book @Maxperson thinks I've never read has an entire part about how they turn idleness into an art form, you know, these farm folk who are completely self-sufficient, being idle as an art form) and never worrying or risking anything.

Meanwhile, everyone else fights against the darkness in the world. They fight the demons, the devils, aberrations, warlords, for every other race in existence, they defend their moments of peace fiercely. Halflings are given peace on a rustic platter.

PCs fight against the darkness of the world. NPCs hire the PCs to fight for them. The vast majority of commoners would flee in terror if they saw a demon or aberration. A lot of people are perfectly okay with halflings representing a pastoral ideal, there are peaceful areas in the world. In many campaigns, it's probably the majority of the world. It's part of why you get such pushback. Most worlds are not overrun by monsters and if they were I don't see how anyone would survive much less halflings.

As far as how halflings are protected? Might as well ask how dragons fly.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

As far as how halflings are protected? Might as well ask how dragons fly.

False equivalency. Almost all other races get explanations for how they are protected. Dragons don't need an explanation for how they fly, because no other flying monster has an explanation for how they fly. This comparison would be valid if Griffons, Hippogriffs, and Pegasi had explanations for how they fly, but they don't.