By expanding on it, you mean attachig your own add-ons. Which, incidentally, aren't part of the existing lore. Since my point is that there is a lack of lore, you expanding on the lore with your own personal additions doesn't change anything except telling us that we can homebrew them. Which we knew.
Since you don't seem to get the point, I'll repeat it once instead of a dozen more times: I am extrapolating from the existing lore. Just like you probably do for elves, dwarfs, humans, and all the other dozens of races out there.
Do you always act so rude and dismissive of people when trying to convince them of something?
When I've had to repeat that extrapolating from existing lore isn't just rewriting them or making stuff up whole-cloth, for probably the dozenth time, yes, my temper starts to fray a bit.
You may claim you don't need a bullet point list, but you apparently do since you don't seem to see the actual lore unless it's spelled out and claim that extrapolation or expanding upon the existing lore is the same as completely making it up.
No, they didn't give us that. They didn't write that halflings are known lorekeepers.
From the wiki:
"Halfling culture had a fondness for stories and legends and was rich in the oral tradition. So much care was put into the retelling of traditional stories and their preservation that halflings often unwittingly had access to lore about ancient and long-gone cultures or empires that others had long since forgotten about. Many halflings were able to recall some detail of the ancient past, though it was usually wrapped in the shrouds of legends."
They may not have developed the halfling Dewey decimal system, but that all sounds like lorekeeping to me.
They didn't write that their desire to live simple lives away from politics means that they are the secret shadow rulers of all of the nations. Being good farmers wasn't anything at all like controlling the food supply of the world.
It's an
extrapolation. No other race is depicted as being both part of a society and also rejecting that society's rulers
and having "inherent stealth and [an] unassuming nature [that] helps halflings to avoid unwanted attention. No other race is depicted as being good farmers or chefs. There are logical conclusions that can be drawn from this information. I showed you one such conclusion.
No, the problem is that people say things like "most halflings are adventurers" and then follow it with "most halflings stay home and don't go on adventures" and then tell me that the only reason I point out that that is a problem is because I don't like halflings and I'm unwilling to even give them a moments thought. Sure, I can think about what I'm reading. And thinking about it is what leads me to thinking "hey they can't be both mostly adventuring and mostly staying home, that's a contradiction"
It's not a contradiction. They adventure for a while, then settle down. Or vice versa. It says the same thing with elves, after all. Or some halflings stay at home and other halflings adventure, like the PH actually says.
Are nomadic bands adventurers or just nomads? Because I didn't read that text as being them being adventurers.
Yes. They aren't just staying at home twiddling their thumbs. They are literally going out there and exploring. That's what the text says. "Exploring Opportunities." There's more to adventuring then going out with the express purpose of killing monsters, after all.
And yes, some halfling communities are nomadic, so why am I talking about them as stay at home farmers? Because the majority if not all of the text on halflings presents them as stay at home farmers, with only very sparse comments on other types of them.
Except that the text doesn't say "majority." You're so keen on what the text says unless it actually says halflings adventure. I already went over this.
My issue is with the identity of the race as a whole.
They do have an identity. Taking solely from the PH and their part in MTF, the vast majority of halflings:
- are stealthy
- are lucky
- are brave
- are nimble
- enjoy an easy, comfortable life but are willing to go into great danger and suffer great hardship when the cause is right
- are reliable and cooperative
- are open and welcoming to all because they judge by intentions and actions, not by race or appearance
- are good cooks and good farmers
- are good-natured, cheerful, and optimistic even when things are bleak
- are practical
- are knowledgeable of old lore
- are natural storytellers and prefer aesops to outright instruction
- are empathic and generous, even to those they don't know
- are humble and not interested in shows of wealth
- are great hosts
- are filled with curiosity and wonderment
- are unflappably calm in the face of danger
- are good with the common folk and prefer them to nobility, soldiers, and scholars
- are peaceful and peace-seeking
- are good at seeming harmless and innocuous, so they are easily overlooked
And there are no evil gods in their pantheon. None. Even the gnomes have an evil god.
This is their very complex hat.
No other race has that combination of traits. Each race has some of those traits, and some
individuals of other races have all or most of them, but no other race has them all. Not even humans.
This is the halfling identity. You just don't like it.
This is a genuine question here:
what more do you need?
Brownies aren't in the game,
That was a joke.
and mining isn't subjective. I have no idea how you can even make that claim.
Mining is very subjective. Dwarfs make big halls and giant tunnels. Any earth elemental would be bothered by this wanton destruction of rock. Clearly, to them, the best miners are the ones who do the least amount of damage to the stone.
You may think that's a dumb reason, but that's because you're not an earth elemental.
Didn't say any horrors would befall that world. I just said there is a point to having elves, dwarves and tieflings.
Which is?
Now list a human god that isn't worshipped by any halflings. Heck. List a human god from FR, not a Realms god who is worshipped by all the races.
Any of them? I don't know much about the Realms, but its my understanding that there are racial pantheons there for a reason, and most people stay within their race's pantheon.
You said humans and halflings have different cultures and views of family, but halfling lore for the Realms says they don't have a unique culture. And human culture is splintered over a dozen or more different cultures. So... are they really different? Or are they actually the same.
And yet halflings manage to have their own generalities, their own gods, their own mores and customs, despite living in other people's cities.
How does Lucky work in the game? If you roll a 1, you re-roll. How does lucky work in the reality? Good things happen to you? Does it mean that halflings should find piles of gold in their turnip patches? Or maybe it means bad things shouldn't happen to them. Do halflings never get hit by traps because the trap always breaks?
Yes.
How about Brave, what does it do? It gives advantage against fear saves, which are pretty much always a result of magical fear. There is no morale mechanic that represents any sort of losing nerve, it is all magical effects that force people to be unnaturally frightened.
Except that the DM can call for PCs to make saves against mundane fear effects as well. While the Fear and Stress mechanics of VGR may be new, some of us have been using something similar for years.
So how does that work in the reality? Are they just resistant to unnatural fear? What about being cautious or timid? I've seen the concept of a character who was so scared all the time that they couldn't be paralyzed by fear, because they were always scared so it wasn't a big deal for them. Do halflings work like that?
Again, read the lore.
"This aspect of the halfling mind-set accounts for what members of other races often characterize as courage. A halfling about to enter the unknown doesn't feel fear as much as wonderment. Instead of being frightened, the halfling remains optimistic, confident of having a good story to tell when it's all over."
Halfling nimbleness just lets them move through the spaces of creautres larger than them. Well, baring combat you can always move through a creatures space. So, that just means you can't grab a halfling or block their way? That seems bizarre. I could have a guy with a tower shield who blocks left when the halfling goes left, presenting what amounts to a second door... does the halfling leap over them? Do they juke right so fast that the person cannot possibly respond? Are they quicklings able to move at lightning speeds?
Although I don't like racial ASIs, they traditionally have always had a bonus to Dexterity which represents all of the above.
But... it doesn't work on small creatures, so none of that would be the case, because they can be stopped by goblins and gnomes and kobolds. Who aren't that nimble. So... how am I supposed to represent that in the world?
Why does that need special representation? They're good at moving between the legs of larger creatures. Of course it wouldn't work with creatures their size or smaller.
I think that would be mostly because Barovia is a gothic horror setting full of monsters that would pretend to be children to get in and kill everyone and the mother can't take that risk, not because letting your child get devoured by wolves to save yourself is neutral.
Not going by the text.
Which in Barovia would be stupid, and get you all eaten by monsters pretending to be children.
There are surprisingly few monsters like that in Ravenloft.
That lawful good yet again doesn't mean following the laws? Yeah. Like I said, not a rabbit hole we should take this discussion down.
They have their own laws. Nobody says LG means you have to follow other people's laws.
