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

[FrozenNorth]

They have about as much lore as the other races, around 600 words in the PHB that actually focuses on lore. So it's not the volume of the lore, so the logical conclusion is that "weak" really means that they don't have kingdoms, they aren't a warrior race.

Absolutely no one has said that the problem with halflings is that they have fewer words than other write-ups.

Let’s try a thought experiment. Open the PHB. Read the quotation and the description all the way up to the Halflings traits section (but stop at the Halfling trait section).

If you are honest, based on what you have read, would you be able to guess their traits? Would you be able to guess that they are Lucky based on zero mentions of luck in their write-up? Would you be able to guess their Brave trait based on no mentions of courage?

To give credit where its due, @Maxperson, I re-read MToF and it does specifically address these points. Halfling Luck is described in both the write-up snd the quote and Bravery gets a half-paragraph later on.

Does this resolve the issue? Depends.

• MToF came out quite late in the cycle. Since people’s expectations of halflings had been set by the PHB for 5 years, it may feels like “too little, too late”.
• MToF doesn’t reboot earlier lore. Some people might feel that instead of papering over contradictions, it ends up highlighting them. Like where MToF suggests that even experienced rangers might miss a halfling settlement, while “friendly, open, cheerful people” doesn’t really suggest “we take serious efforts to hide our villages from other”;
• they may simply not like the new lore. Luck as a collective trait can seem pretty deus ex machina.
• Some may feel that MToF lore doesn’t address their concerns in the first place. Having had bad experiences with kender and Vistani, WotC is well aware that saying “this race makes for great Rogues” causes a backlash, but a description that just ignores the issue ends up feeling half-baked.

 

[Oofta]

Absolutely no one has said that the problem with halflings is that they have fewer words than other write-ups.

Let’s try a thought experiment. Open the PHB. Read the quotation and the description all the way up to the Halflings traits section (but stop at the Halfling trait section).

If you are honest, based on what you have read, would you be able to guess their traits? Would you be able to guess that they are Lucky based on zero mentions of luck in their write-up? Would you be able to guess their Brave trait based on no mentions of courage?

To give credit where its due, @Maxperson, I re-read MToF and it does specifically address these points. Halfling Luck is described in both the write-up snd the quote and Bravery gets a half-paragraph later on.

Does this resolve the issue? Depends.

• MToF came out quite late in the cycle. Since people’s expectations of halflings had been set by the PHB for 5 years, it may feels like “too little, too late”.
• MToF doesn’t reboot earlier lore. Some people might feel that instead of papering over contradictions, it ends up highlighting them. Like where MToF suggests that even experienced rangers might miss a halfling settlement, while “friendly, open, cheerful people” doesn’t really suggest “we take serious efforts to hide our villages from other”;
• they may simply not like the new lore. Luck as a collective trait can seem pretty deus ex machina.
• Some may feel that MToF lore doesn’t address their concerns in the first place. Having had bad experiences with kender and Vistani, WotC is well aware that saying “this race makes for great Rogues” causes a backlash, but a description that just ignores the issue ends up feeling half-baked.

I don't think you could read the writeup with any of the races and guess their traits with no prior knowledge so I don't see the point.

I'm not saying the lore is perfect. You can't please everyone. They get along well with other races, they have just as much lore. They fit in from a cultural perspective. What they lack is an obvious martial, divine or arcane preference that we associate with adventurers. Instead they adventure out of curiosity, compassion or need.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Isn't it fun? I like gnomes because they are the "little ugly duckling" of the PHB, precisately because they aren't so popular.

Do I like halflings? The classic hairy big-feet version isn't my cup of tea, only as nPCs, the innocent people to be saved by the heroes, but I love the concept of "litle wise children". A 60 years old female halfling is a grandma with the body of a cute little loli.

Maybe in a future halflings become more popular thanks a new class about (summoned) monster pets

* Could female elflings be redesigned to sell waifu merchandising (pillows and things like this)?

 

[Nellisir]

I'm just jumping around, because I'm not reading tens of pages of you people bickering about the percentage of halflings that own swords AND the percentage of half-elves that have whetstones AND the likelihood of those two meeting, but it really seems like an amazing exercise in projection where you both explain the RIGHT way to play D&D.

Do I like halflings? The classic hairy big-feet version isn't my cup of tea, only as nPCs, the innocent people to be saved by the heroes, but I love the concept of "litle wise children". A 60 years old female halfling is a grandma with the body of a cute little loli.

OK, that last bit is messing with my head a little. OTHERWISE...

I'm not the world's biggest fan of halflings, so I ditched them from my homebrew. Not a huge fuss. Eventually I brought them back, but as domovii - symbiotically intertwined with human culture, more or less. I'm still reluctant to do much with them though.

Gnomes are pretty common - one of the four races created by the gods from the body of the oldest god (plus humans, dragons, and giants).

 

[Maxperson]

Saying "The lore is the lore" is not a strong response to the argument that "the lore does not make sense".

No, but numbers of halflings played has nothing to do with the lore at all. It was a Red Herring post.

 

[Maxperson]

Fitting in isn't interaction.

It is in a human, elven or dwarven society. If you don't interact, you don't fit in.

 

[Maxperson]

Absolutely no one has said that the problem with halflings is that they have fewer words than other write-ups.

Let’s try a thought experiment. Open the PHB. Read the quotation and the description all the way up to the Halflings traits section (but stop at the Halfling trait section).

If you are honest, based on what you have read, would you be able to guess their traits? Would you be able to guess that they are Lucky based on zero mentions of luck in their write-up? Would you be able to guess their Brave trait based on no mentions of courage?

To give credit where its due, @Maxperson, I re-read MToF and it does specifically address these points. Halfling Luck is described in both the write-up snd the quote and Bravery gets a half-paragraph later on.

Does this resolve the issue? Depends.

• MToF came out quite late in the cycle. Since people’s expectations of halflings had been set by the PHB for 5 years, it may feels like “too little, too late”.
• MToF doesn’t reboot earlier lore. Some people might feel that instead of papering over contradictions, it ends up highlighting them. Like where MToF suggests that even experienced rangers might miss a halfling settlement, while “friendly, open, cheerful people” doesn’t really suggest “we take serious efforts to hide our villages from other”;
• they may simply not like the new lore. Luck as a collective trait can seem pretty deus ex machina.
• Some may feel that MToF lore doesn’t address their concerns in the first place. Having had bad experiences with kender and Vistani, WotC is well aware that saying “this race makes for great Rogues” causes a backlash, but a description that just ignores the issue ends up feeling half-baked.

They aren't hiding their villages, though. They are just living in out of the way places and their gods/luck makes the paths hard to find. Yes, they're open and cheerful, but it also goes out of the way say that despite that, they aren't naive. They're not going to just invite lots of folks to know where they live just because they are cheerful and happy people who get along a lot of the time.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Since you don't read books well, it seems that you are unaware that one guy runs the whole place and dictates what goes on.

Again with accusations that I lack the ability to read. All because you want to make a claim that "the Mad Mage" has barred even unintelligent unthinking creatures from venturing to the surface for the common good.

Yea. Sure.

I didn't claim, that. It's the lore that states it.

Still your claim.

There are no small towns near the halfling villages. That's what living in an out of the way place means.

Ah, so we are back to leaving so far away from other civilizations that they can't trade or take things to market. Funny, we were in Cormyr there for a while, and when I look at that map I posted, most of the settlements in there are only a day or two apart, so what? Halflings live further than two days away from anything in there? How? There isn't that much space to be that far out of the way and still be in the kingdom.

You do understand that countries are really big and have lots and lots of open space that isn't near a town, right?

You do understand that many countries are not that big, and even the biggest countries get settled to the point that there isn't a lot of open space right? I mean, clearly not, because you some how thing there are thousands (plural) or miles of empty space inside of a country, far removed from anything else.

I mean, France, the entire country, is less than a thousand miles across. You want an empty space the size of FRANCE inside of a Kingdom. That is bonkers.

They have one. It kicks in when things come to their town.

Oh, once in 60 to 100 years, compared to humans dealing with it... once every 3 to 5 years. Same with dwarves, tieflings, Goliaths actually seek out trouble every year, dwarves... It really gets tiring to list these out every time. I'm just going to start saying "everyone else" because it is quite literally every single race except halflings.

As I said, YOU can run your necromancers as morons. I'm not going to.

Continuing to call people morons with no evidence or reasoning except that it makes you seem smart. Classy.

There are these things called roads in-between towns and cities. Even the undead would use them.

And then you say stupid things like this. Yes, I'm sure the mindless dead stop and consider that they should follow the roads. That's why when the survivors in The Walking Dead are in the forest they are completely safe, everyone knows zombies follow the roads like good citizens.

Cormyr is about 32,000 square miles. That's plenty of space for a small village or ten of halflings to live in out of the way places.

Wuh? Did you even bother to look at Cormyr? Yes, in square miles they can cover 32,000, since that is less than 180 miles by 180 miles. That is a country smaller than the State of Indiana (35,870 miles)

And that area is filled with cities and towns and villages. All of which the halflings have to be more than two days away from to be so far out of the way that anything happening to the town doesn't effect them. To put this inperspective for you. Two days travel is 48 miles, we'll round to 50 since we need to be further. That is nearly 1/3 of the country away from every other town and city in the country. To have 10 villages that far away from each other an everything else, you would need to triple the size of the country in question.

This doesn't work. Even a single village that far out of the way of everything strains credibility.

They have unlimited questions. What does it matter if the halfling satisfies his curiosity about flies?

Then come up with something else the halfling is curious about. That's the point which you are missing.

No, you are missing the point. You are treating halflings as though they are eternal children, except worse. Exactly like Kender are treated. Nothing matters to them in that portrayal. They are just like the Fey, or an insane person.

Because it didn't matter. No matter how much population math you show, halflings have many more adventurers than half-elves. This is a 5e fact. There's no population math you can show that can change that fact.

"No amount of evidence can prove anything, because I am right". I should have known better, but I got my hopes up. If evidence is meaningless to you, then discussing with you is meaningless.

 

[Chaosmancer]

But most of what makes dwarves iconic in your opinion is related back to martial might.

Yep, halflings do represent the "little people" that make thing work. The clerk we don't really see, the guy who stocks the counter at the store, the commoner who raises the crop that feeds the smith so they can make the weapons of war. Whether specific gods have more impact is going to be world and campaign specific, war gets more notice than sunshine and plentiful crops.

I don't see a problem with any of it. They do fit in, they do have a niche, an aspect of society represented as a race. It's just not as warriors or people that make weapons of war.

Here is the thing though.

The halfling is the guy who stocks the shelves.

But human commoners stock the shelves. Dwarf commoners stock the shelves. Elf Commoners stock the shelves. Triton Commoners stock the shelves.

Well, halflings raise crops!

So do humans. So do elves. So do dwarves. So do Firbolgs. So do Dragonborn.

The idea that the halfling niche is that they are commoners completely barrels into the basic fact that other races have commoners. So either halflings are the commoners for the entire world, or their "niche" is that they are just like every other commoner in the setting.

 

[Minigiant]

But most of what makes dwarves iconic in your opinion is related back to martial might.

Yep, halflings do represent the "little people" that make thing work. The clerk we don't really see, the guy who stocks the counter at the store, the commoner who raises the crop that feeds the smith so they can make the weapons of war. Whether specific gods have more impact is going to be world and campaign specific, war gets more notice than sunshine and plentiful crops.

I don't see a problem with any of it. They do fit in, they do have a niche, an aspect of society represented as a race. It's just not as warriors or people that make weapons of war.

Brewing isn't martial
Masonry isnt martial
Metalwork isn't martial
Forges aren't always martial
Deepmining ins't martial