D&D General My Problem(s) With Halflings, and How To Create Engaging/Interesting Fantasy Races

[Crimson Longinus]

The designers use the frequency to assign which lineages are "privileged" and which arent.

How?

 

[Yaarel]

How?

In other words, in the Forgotten Realms setting, these four lineages − Human, Dwarf, Elf, and Halfling − are the heroes of the story. Everyone else is a background support character.

The problem is, the Halfling is defacto a background character, with no personality of its own. It is redundant with the Human.

 

[Cadence]

The problem is, the Halfling is defacto a background character, with no personality of its own. It is redundant with the Human.

And that's exactly what they want you to think...

 

[Crimson Longinus]

In other words, in the Forgotten Realms setting, these four lineages − Human, Dwarf, Elf, and Halfling − are the heroes of the story. Everyone else is a background support character.

The problem is, the Halfling is defacto a background character, with no personality of its own. It is redundant with the Human.

So your first claim is that core races get preferential treatment and get showed on the foreground and your second claim is that halflings remain on the background. So if your second claim is correct, your first one isn't and vice versa...

 

[Oofta]

In other words, in the Forgotten Realms setting, these four lineages − Human, Dwarf, Elf, and Halfling − are the heroes of the story. Everyone else is a background support character.

The problem is, the Halfling is defacto a background character, with no personality of its own. It is redundant with the Human.

Umm ... right. I don't read it that way. I read it as these are the races that are most commonly used in campaigns at the point the PHB was published.

I don't really care how they organize the PHB races, there should probably just be a big disclaimer "check with your DM what races are allowed". Feels like yet one more mountain being made out of a molehill.

 

[Yaarel]

So your first claim is that core races get preferential treatment and get showed on the foreground and your second claim is that halflings remain on the background. So if your second claim is correct, your first one isn't and vice versa...

The Halfling is an example of bad writing.

If there is a character that is in the background that only shows up for a moment and then is gone. There is no need to develop it.

But if the author spends pages and pages without developing a character, it is bad writing.

 

[Yaarel]

Umm ... right. I don't read it that way. I read it as these are the races that are most commonly used in campaigns at the point the PHB was published.

I don't really care how they organize the PHB races, there should probably just be a big disclaimer "check with your DM what races are allowed". Feels like yet one more mountain being made out of a molehill.

If the Players Handbook lists the Human as a reference point, then the other races by alphabetical order, that is fine with me.

 

[Oofta]

I really don't get gnomes = halfling thing. Yes, they're both short. Yes they have a positive attitude. That's ... pretty much where the similarities end for me when I read the descriptions. Most halflings tend to be homebody couch potatoes who occasionally go on vacation to raid dragon lairs, most gnomes are energizer bunnies and pranksters. Halflings are pastoral, gnomes prefer woods and hills. Halflings don't care about material wealth, gnomes covet gems and on and on.

But hey, they're both short so I guess that makes them practically identical.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Why should I bother to go through all the books when you have shown through your repeated actions on this thread that you will just dismiss it?

And more to the point, there's no need to. People can make stuff up or use the Tolkien standard however they wish.


I presume that since you keep saying there's nothing in the books to tell you how to play a halfling, then that means you can't figure out how to play something unless there's at least two written, canonical standards. Like below...


Same with my campaign and elves and dwarfs. Nobody's played them. I still spent some time figuring out what elf and dwarf towns and lives were like. I included some of that info in the player handout I gave people, which consisted of 2-3 paragraphs per PC race.

Maybe nobody at your table plays halflings because the DM, whoever that is, doesn't even try to bring them into their setting. Next time you start a new game, try writing up bit on halflings and how they interact with the world around them. Maybe you'll get someone interested in trying them out.


Then prove your creativity, instead of just demanding canonical examples that are really only canonical in one specific campaign setting.

A beholder city could be fun! Imagine a beholder that has somehow managed to suppress its species' natural xenophobia. It created or captured several weaker beholders and has magically put them into a deep sleep (extra-strong sleep-eye ray? magic item? drugs? we'll figure that out later). It then whispers to them, shaping its dreams so they slowly, but continually produce new beholders, which the main beholder then controls. Here's where I'd start converting beholder-kin from 2e because clearly these newly-created beholders are going to be weird-looking.

Aaand I might just expand this into a particularly weird and alien Ravenloft domain.


Ask me, the worldbuilding DM.

Other than Ravenloft (and possibly Planescape, one of these days), I never run in pre-gen worlds. I strip-mine other settings for interesting bits and use them in my own world.


This is what I mean. The PH doesn't draw an neon arrow connecting halflings with druids or nature priests and you can't seem to imagine it could be anything different.

The correct answer is, halflings have as much of a druidic or nature priest connection as you, the DM, want them to have.

Which really shows why having too much lore (in the PH, at least) is actually a bad thing. It constrains you into being unable to think outside of its little lore box.

(Also, you're drawing a blank on why a people who work in the agriculture field would want to have spellcasters that specialize in plant and animal magic?)

This is really getting to be an aggravating trend in your arguments. Not only do you consistently answer questions rooted in the RAW of the game by talking about your own homebrew, but then you start belittling others who want to focus on the question they were asking by challenging their creativity and demanding that they homebrew as well. IT is beyond frustrating.

Your personal homebrew is not in the PHB. Just because we are trying to focus the discussion on the PHB does not make us incapable of homebrewing or worse DMs than you. We are focusing on the PHB because that is the product released by the company that contains the baseline we are talking about. Stop trying to make this about us being poor, helpless DMS who can't run the game without being hand-held. It is insulting and does nothing but distract from the conversation.

 

[Cadence]

I really don't get gnomes = halfling thing. Yes, they're both short. Yes they have a positive attitude. That's ... pretty much where the similarities end for me when I read the descriptions. Most halflings tend to be homebody couch potatoes who occasionally go on vacation to raid dragon lairs, most gnomes are energizer bunnies and pranksters. Halflings are pastoral, gnomes prefer woods and hills. Halflings don't care about material wealth, gnomes covet gems and on and on.

But hey, they're both short so I guess that makes them practically identical.

The separation based on the main class descriptions seems clear. When you get to the halfling sub-races where one is like elves and one is like dwarves the separation seems to fall apart.