Paul Farquhar
Legend
Irrelevant. No one reads that shtuff anyway.
So what? As pointed out, it's not like the PHB has a fixed race-count, or that subraces are a good rule/likely to make it into another edition in any case.
D&D General My Problem(s) With Halflings, and How To Create Engaging/Interesting Fantasy Races
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Garthanos
Arcadian Knight
Very effective and cool... We reflavored ours as humans with draconic bloodline (like Legendary Pendragons and the real aristocracies of Korea/China)
Hexmage-EN
Legend
Oh, definitely. Even if the appearance of a character almost never comes up in play it is still a hook to get people to want to play a certain race in particular.
I'm particularly fond of many of the 4E and Pathfinder illustrations of gnomes:
Mind of tempest
(he/him)advocate for 5e psionics
the phb is how you sell a player on a concept, especially if it is a new player.
FrozenNorth
Hero
No. YOU don’t read that stuff, therefore it is irrelevant to YOU.
What basis do you have for concluding that there will be no subraces in 6e? So far, elf, halfling and dwarf subraces have been a thing since at least 2nd ed. I think it is likely it continue to be a thing in 6e.
As for a race count, of course the PHB has a race count. WotC decided to include 4 core races (with longer write-ups and subraces) and 5 “uncommon” races. If they didn’t include more, it’s because adding extra pages to their book costs money, and they concluded that space is better devoted to something else. That calculation will not change in 6e, when WotC will need to decide whether (for instance), genasi, goliaths and tabaxi should be included in the PHB, and if they are, which races they should replace.
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Hexmage-EN
Legend
As I understand it, gnomes were held back until the PHB2 in 4E because the designers were searching for a more unique niche for them that set them apart from dwarves and halflings, ending up on them being the escaped thralls of the fomorians of the Feywild's Underdark who use illusion and trickery to survive. Pathfinder ended up going a similar direction, with gnomes as escapees from some threat in the First World of the Fey (and deep gnomes as enemies of a fey court known as the Court of Ether).
Basically, both 4E and the Pathfinder dispensed with the "gnomes as tinkerers" archetype, but 5E brought it back. The 4E style gnome persisted as the forest gnome, but with the fomorians demoted back to being just wandering giants rather than the masters of multiple Underdark kingdoms the gnomes lost their backstory.
An interesting comparison to make is that while 5E halflings are stated in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes to be supernaturally lucky enough to avoid conflict, 4E gnomes are survivors who have to employ magic and cunning to survive persistent threats. Svirfneblin in particular had been that way for a while, but 4E made "magically-gifted survivor" a background trait for gnomes in general.
It's also interesting to compare the default behavior of the Pathfinder gnome with the 4E gnome. Pathfinder gnomes are curious, crave new experiences, and are prone to risk-taking for the sake of novelty. 4E gnomes are curious as well, but their history has made them cautious and unwilling to be the center of attention unless they know it's safe. Whereas a Pathfinder gnome would pull a prank on someone in front of everybody, a 4E gnome would do it subtly and not reveal that they were the one behind it except to people they trust.
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Yaarel
🇮🇱 🇺🇦 He-Mage
Regarding a core four,
I feel the lineages should be:
• Human
• Elf
• Dwarf
• Giant
The Giant would start off as Medium or Large (perhaps depending on a Constitution prereq). If the player wants, possibly, Huge can be available at a high tier, and Gargantuan at epic tier.
That said. I am comfortable with placing Human first as the standard, and all the rest of the lineages in alphabetic order.
I feel the lineages should be:
• Human
• Elf
• Dwarf
• Giant
The Giant would start off as Medium or Large (perhaps depending on a Constitution prereq). If the player wants, possibly, Huge can be available at a high tier, and Gargantuan at epic tier.
That said. I am comfortable with placing Human first as the standard, and all the rest of the lineages in alphabetic order.
Paul Farquhar
Legend
It is setting specific - it belongs in setting books. Notice lineages have much shorter fluff text. That's the way forwards.
Because the will be no races, they are being replaced with lineages, and there are no sub-lineages.
Also, bad rules where bad. No one needs 20+ different flavours of elf.
No, you have it completely backwards, and they could easily have included twice as many races by cutting down on the waffle. But they didn't think any more where needed at that time.
Chaosmancer
Legend
It is just so ridiculous.
40 something pages ago I got skewered for telling people that they couldn't claim personality traits as being defining for a race. Now I'm getting skewered for dismissing differences between racial personalities. Which no one was ever claiming was a thing... except now, when it is a thing.
I actually started my first post in this thread with a direct quote from the Forgotten Realms wiki that stated unequivocally, "Halflings have no distinct culture in Faerun". Out of the 5 officially supported settings other than Faerun... Two of them are Magic the Gathering crossovers, and don't even have halflings as far as I know. One is Ravenloft which does not give a unique halfling culture to Ravenloft, because it is based on the Domain you are in. And the last is Eberron, where half of the halflings have no distinct culture. So, in the entirety of 5th edition dungeons and dragons, there is one unique halfling culture, making up half of a setting. Greyhawk doesn't have one, if we start looking beyond officially supported settings for this edition. And then there is Darksun, which isn't supported either.
And, Talenta and Darksun represent a massive shift away from the PHB halfling. Which lends credence to the claim that PHB halflings are the ones in Greyhawk and FR.
So, you can claim I'm just "just dismissing them" but I'm backing this up with explicit text. I'm providing evidence. I don't want this to be the case, but the only way for me to say this isn't the case is to ignore the evidence I am seeing. And I'm not going to ignore evidence just to agree with you.
Chaosmancer
Legend
I am often dumb-founded how I can mention Eberron in literally dozens of posts, and people still think I'm overlooking it. The PGB halfling =/= Talenta Plains halfings. We know this right? We know the PHB doesn't mention ancestor worship or the important of caring for your dinosaur mount. So, in talking about the PHB halfling, I shouldn't even need to look at Eberron.
BUT I DID!
And I acknowledge, Eberron, a setting known for rewriting basically everything and some very good worldbuilding, did something interesting with some of their halflings. You also mention Golarion... which is a Pathfinder setting? I'm not really sure what Pathfinder has done with halflings, never played, never really considered it. I know Golarion has some interesting art and lore, but I also don't see what they really have to do with DnD, except to show that a literal DnD clone kept DnD races like halflings.
But, all in all, whether it is Golarion or something from the 1970's or some third-party company like Ghostfire Gaming... how does that excuse the PHB? Like, do we give Ford props for Tesla making electric cars? If I was able to go and find a dozen DnD clones that did halflings better... wouldn't that be a sign that DnD dropped the ball on halflings and should try and do better in the future? Like, your point that I should look anywhere except the PHB to find really good takes on halflings, really makes it seem like the PHB halflings aren't great.
And instead of people saying that I'm wrong, and that they are different enough, and giving examples of how they are different enough... So far I'm just seeing a lot of silence. Which either means no one wants to have an actual discussion or that they don't have anything to disagree with me other than saying I'm wrong because I hate halflings.
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