No, I'm only really getting upset that I'm getting dragged over the coals for not just bowing out and saying there is no reason to debate, while at the same time seeing people putting up strawmen of how I am refusing to consider other points of view and must hate halflings and every good thing that exists because I want complexity instead of a 2D hobbit clone.
Absolutely nobody is saying that. Not even close.
No, the lore in the PHB is not the only lore. However, it is the lore that we are discussing. If you have no interest in discussions, why bother posting.
I've been discussing it. Every time I take a bit of PH lore and expand upon it, you call it homebrewing and irrelevant.
As for why I don't use the hooks and ideas presented and expand on them... might be because I find those hooks and ideas either non-existent or so weak they collapse under any attempt to try and expand on them. It might be why I keep saying that halflings lack adequate hooks and ideas. You know, the thing you keep saying I should just fix myself instead of pointing out.
Really? I brought up ideas like, halflings travel the world to record history, or they work in secret to overthrow kingdoms, or they control the entire area's food supply, or they're a dispossessed minority forced into the ghettos of human cities and adopt human customs, losing their own culture in the process... and those are boring or weak?
What do you consider to be a strong racial hook? Seriously.
So... I am supposed to take the idea that they don't listen to anyone and don't get involved in politics and say "that means that they are the power behind the throne and are terrorists, but no one ever catches or even suspects them"
Why not? Do you need it spelled out with bullet points before its acceptable?
I mean... I guess I can homebrew that. But I don't see any indication that they are that way in the lore. You know, the lore I keep talking about. The thing you keep ignoring to tell me that I should just homebrew halfings instead of looking to see if we can fix them for other players so they don't need to homebrew them at their tables for the next 50 years.
You mean, the lore you keep giving only the most cursory of readings to? The one that has hooks you refuse to bite, and ideas you refuse to explore? That lore?
Going outside the lore is where you get cannibals or dino-riders. Staying in the lore is where you find that they like to chronicle history, or that they dislike political institutions, or that they are good farmers. Then you take that bit of lore and expand it. That's not homebrewing. That's using what they gave us.
My reading of the Fancy Feet section makes it sound like it might be one youth in the entire village. If it was "most" of the halflings of the village... A) they wouldn't be a village, because 51% of everyone would leave and B) They wouldn't try and stop them from leaving. Which is explicitly something some villages do. Actually, it even says there might be one elder who had fancy feet themselves. Which again... isn't most halflings.
Or, you might be reading too little into it and it might be most of them.
But also, notice how in your second paragraph you suddenly shift to saying that most halflings get guilted into staying home?
That was an example I gave. Not a hard and fast rule for a world. Try thinking about what you're reading instead of just taking it at face value.
Your problem is you don't like halflings, and therefore are unwilling to give them even a moment of thought of how to make them interesting.
The original point I contested is that most halflings go on adventures. Now you are saying most of them don't go on adventures... which was my point. Most halflings don't go on adventures. I don't care whether or not they WANT to go on adventures. That wasn't what I was arguing about. I was challenging what they actually did. A point that you now seem to be conceding.
The PH description: "
Though some halflings live out their days in remote agricultural communities, others form nomadic bands that travel constantly, lured by the open road and the wide horizon to discover the wonders of new lands and peoples."
The use of the words "some" and others," rather than "most" and "a few" suggest that the ratio of stay-at-homes and wanderers is closer to 50/50.
I read the same wiki a few times. I missed it. Also, nothing about Bat Fishing in Mordenkainen's that I've ever seen.
So?
In fact, no one in this thread other than you ever mentioned it as a potential hook. So, I'm not really sure how it suddenly became so important to the identity of the race.
Again, I point out an interesting tidbit and you take it to mean it's Incredibly Important. It's a cool and interesting and
different thing. What do they do with bats? Do they eat them? Tame them as pets or as mosquito killers? Kill them for being not as pretty as birds? Mount them on the wall like a trophy bass?
I can also safely assume that since they don't say they are the best chefs, that they aren't the best chefs. After all, every race has their own tastes and food is incredibly subjective. There might not be a race of "best chefs". There is no race of "best cobblers" either.
Then it's also safe to assume that dwarfs are not the best miners, since that's subjective as well.
Also, brownies are the best cobblers.
Yes, there are points to having elves, dwarves and tieflings.
Which are? What about elves, dwarfs, and tieflings is so important that they can't also be replaced by just humans? Humans can mine, can commune with nature, and can channel hellish powers.
I mean, in general, not just in the Realms. What horrors would befall a world that didn't have elves or dwarfs in it?
If the importance of Halflings, one of the four core races, is tied up in a detail that was considered not important enough to even mention... again, I think that shows my point that halfling lore is not adequately written and requires another look to make sure it is written properly so that people don't have to play guessing games about why halflings matter to the setting.
Nobody is saying they can't benefit from more lore. Except for
@Don Durito, who says that their malleability is one of their good points.
But whenever we present you with potential lore, even lore taken from their own description, you dismiss it.
Actually, if we are going off of FR lore, humans and halflings don't have different gods. Because humans have no human gods. All the gods worshipped by humans are worshipped by everyone. It is a detail that bothered me at the beginning of 5e.
Um, Yondalla, Sheela Peryroyl, Arvoreen, Brandobaris, that death god whose name I can't remember, Yondalla's evil split personality... those are halfling gods. Humans don't worship them. They're listed as being in the halfling pantheon, not the Realms pantheon.
And, can you tell me what the Forgotten Realms humans view is on society and family? I'm really interested in seeing what monolithic human society is in the Forgotten Realms, because when I looked for halflings I was specifically told they don't have a unique culture. Which implies that... they share a lot of the outlooks of society and family with the common humans of the various lands. But, since you are going to tell me what the human outlook is, we can compare.
I don't care about the Realms. I have no idea what their view is on society and family. Other than that there was a probably an entire book or series of Dragon magazine articles about it, because there seems to be a
lot of info on the Realms.
I can tell you about human views of society and family is in different parts of Ravenloft, though. Would that count? I run human-only RL, though, so I can't tell you too much about halflings there. Or elves, or dwarfs.
Also, while they do have mechanical traits, I don't know what those mean in practice.
You don't know what Lucky, Brave, and Nimble mean?
What value does alignment even have in this discussion? Yeah, humans are any... but what does halflings being Lawful Good mean in their lore? They are all nice and pleasant people who ignore their lawful rulers in exchange for their own village elders? That's a rabbit hole and not worth pursuing.
Well, in Barovia, it is said that a mother would let her child be devoured by wolves rather than open the door after nightfall to let that child into the house. Because humans in Barovia are mostly neutral.
As a generally lawful good people--not that I use alignment, but if I did, then halflings would be generally lawful good--halflings
would risk the wolves to let in the child.
And if they ignore their lawful rulers--who are likely human, since obviously all halflings live in human lands--then that means they don't subscribe to human laws. Which says a lot about them, that I'm sure you will ignore.
If the intent of the books is to provide inadequate information that the DM is supposed to go about fixing and filling in... I wonder why I bothered reading the lore at all. I could have just made it up whole cloth and saved myself a lot of reading.
So why is it that I am able to find lore in the PH that can be used, but you can't? Not make up lore, but find it.
