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

[Maxperson]

That's campaign dependent isn't it? I mean, look at Phandalin. It's written up as a "Frontier town" yet it has no walls and has had only minor issues.

Most farm villages throughout history have had little in the ways of defenses.

It seems people think that danger to commoners is like what we saw and read by George R.R. Martin's books. I like the realism and grittiness he shows, but that's probably the most ridiculous thing he has done. In war, commoners are not raped and killed in those numbers, even by the enemy and especially when the enemy is also part of the country involved. The commoners are needed by the nobles to survive, and even more so in Westeros where harsh multi-year long winters come along every so often.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Even if you read GRRM - there is a war on! It's not set in normal times, even for that world.

 

[Oofta]

But peaceful agrarian groups that weren't militant naughty words exist and continue to exist in real life. It's only in the cartoonish world of Grimdark that there is only war.

Absolutely nothing happened new in this thread while I was on vacation did it?

Not really. Some people assume all halflings would be eaten by ogres because they aren't described as a military minded race based on conquest and glory while ignoring the lore about halflings finding out of they way places that are easy to miss. Oh, and for some reason they need exotic spices in order to enjoy food.

 

[Oofta]

Oh, one other thought on the sub-races of halflings not having distinct lore. I've always assumed that they took the lead from Tolkien; the sub-races of elves and dwarves have settled and live in different areas with different cultures. The different types of hobbits (and now halflings) all live in the same areas and have the same culture, the sub-races live in blended communities.

So wood elves and high elves are both elves and may both live in the woods, but they are distinct and separate communities with subtle differences.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Oh, one other thought on the sub-races of halflings not having distinct lore. I've always assumed that they took the lead from Tolkien;

It's what I referred to earlier. The halfling subraces used to have lore back in 1st edition, and it was pretty much copy-pasted from Tolkien. Then they got smacked down with the lawsuit, and they have been cagey about it ever since.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Am I the only one who doesn't like 'subraces' at all anyway? They were basically introduced to make bad guy factions that were okay to racism to death and allow people to play an elf for every class. They don't really add anything to the world besides an unexplored parallel to real world race that never comes up because none of these subraces ever interact besides the ones we're supposed to kill for being different.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Am I the only one who doesn't like 'subraces' at all anyway? They were basically introduced to make bad guy factions that were okay to racism to death and allow people to play an elf for every class. They don't really add anything to the world besides an unexplored parallel to real world race that never comes up because none of these subraces ever interact besides the ones we're supposed to kill for being different.

I think in 5e they where a kludge to make a greater variety of PCs possible, and now invalidated by floating ASIs.

But it's time for them to go.

 

[Maxperson]

Even if you read GRRM - there is a war on! It's not set in normal times, even for that world.

Westeros sees lots of wars. If that many commoners were killed in every war, there would be no great families as they would have all starved to death.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Westeros sees lots of wars. If that many commoners were killed in every war, there would be no great families as they would have all starved to death.

Usually in war you try not to destroy all the villages and kill all the commoners - if you win you are going to need the food they produce!

Obviously, this does not apply to the undead.

But Westeros does have more than it's fair share of psychotic idiots running things.

 

[Vaalingrade]

The commoners are part of the property you're fighting over in a Feudal society.

Of course if you read some of the surrounding material, you find that the people of Westeros aren't smart enough to hold tournaments without LIVE STEEL, so they're a doomed society anyway. First disease outbreak they come across they'll try to solve with incestuous French kissing and pox orgies.