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

[Chaosmancer]

When have people done that? I mean, I tend to skim this topic nowadays and I certainly disagree with you. But telling you that they disagree with your vision of halflings is not telling you that your opinion is invalid. It's when you represent your opinion as fact or objective truth that you get pushback. You dismiss anything people do at their table. In effect "wanting to talk about something beyond my table" is saying you think this should be applied to my table as well as your own or should be applied to future official publications.

Post as many options as you want. If I disagree, I may tell you I disagree and why.

I dismiss it because it isn't relevant to the questions being asked.

"I want to talk about the PHB and how it presents hobbits"

"Okay, here is my homebrew world that has absolutely nothing to do with the PHB"

"That's.... nice, but has nothing to do with the PHB and doesn't have any bearing on the conversation"

"Why are you constantly rejecting anything that disagrees with you or happens at our tables"


And you did tell me why my changes to halflings were something that you would reject from being changed in the PHB. It was because they changed halflings. Not exactly anywhere else to go with that.

 

[Chaosmancer]

@Hussar @Chaosmancer Do you remember who suggested making Halflings a sub-races of gnomes to help them seatch? (If you, do you have a favorite post?)

I don't remember who said it first.

I've been okay folding halflings into a subrace of gnomes. The similarities are pretty glaring to me. I'd also, to be frankly honest, be even more okay just expanding Forest Gnomes to cover some of the halfling space. A lot of interesting things you could do with that.

 

[lingual]

But the moment I want to talk about something beyond my table, then people care about my opinions. And then they tell me that I am wrong, and I shouldn't be putting forth those opinions. I should only be concerned with the table in front of me, and nothing else.

People are disagreeing with you. They also disagree with the way certain opinions are treated as objective facts. Most people are fine with halflings. Since you are not, the game is structured to allow enough creative freedom to do what you want at your table.

They don't care what page the halflings is on in the PHB and are content with the way it is.

I see this in other threads too. Someone is unhappy with a certain aspect of the game and proposes that official changes be made. They are not satisfied that they themselves can already make changes as they see fit that don't affect the majority of the players.

 

[Mind of tempest]

People are disagreeing with you. They also disagree with the way certain opinions are treated as objective facts. Most people are fine with halflings. Since you are not, the game is structured to allow enough creative freedom to do what you want at your table.

They don't care what page the halflings is on in the PHB and are content with the way it is.

I see this in other threads too. Someone is unhappy with a certain aspect of the game and proposes that official changes be made. They are not satisfied that they themselves can already make changes as they see fit that don't affect the majority of the players.

you mistake the first point from other players what I gather is that people have no feeling one way or the other for them

 

[pemerton]

@Hussar's argument, as I understand it, is that Halflings take up valuable page count in the PHB that could be better spent. It's no rebuttal to this argument to show that most people don't object to Halflings, or can just ignore them. That's true of lots of stuff, but isn't a reason to include that possible stuff in the PHB!

 

[Hussar]

Then why aren't you and others railing against the even lower rated gnomes?!

You honestly think, after reading my posts, that I would have any issue whatsoever giving gnomes the heave as well?

Last time we did that, we got two of the most popular races in the game - Tieflings and Dragonborn. Imagine what might happen this time around.

 

[Hussar]

@Hussar's argument, as I understand it, is that Halflings take up valuable page count in the PHB that could be better spent. It's no rebuttal to this argument to show that most people don't object to Halflings, or can just ignore them. That's true of lots of stuff, but isn't a reason to include that possible stuff in the PHB!

Frankly, if the best thing you can say about something that it's easy to ignore, then, well, that's hardly praise is it?

 

[Hussar]

So far as I can recall, 4.x percent hasn’t been backed up with a source.

It's straight from this site: You can find it in the news on Enworld: Humans, Fighters, and Life Domain Most Popular On D&D Beyond

So, yes, it's backed up with a pretty solid source.

 

[Hussar]

Note, if you follow the link back in my last post, it takes you to a table that shows the distribution of classes. See, to me, that table is what things should look like. Yeah, sure, Druids and Monks are sucking hind tit, but, since the spread is only 6-12% from top to bottom, it's not exactly damning. Note, we have nothing since Artificers have been brought forward, so, who knows what the distribution is now.

But, the races distribution is basically the top 5 and then everyone else. That says to me that the "everyone else" needs some work because it's certainly not very appealing to players. It's not 1974 anymore. There's no reason we have to have our "base races" modeled after Lord of the Rings. If any race isn't really making the cut, then, well, it's time to try something else. I mean, @Neonchameleon talked about how there aren't other races nipping at the heels. I disagree. Even by that table, Aaracockra and Aasimar both look to have a decent shot. A flying race in the PHB would be outstanding.

Again, I'm only looking at a tiny, tiny slice of information. Maybe halflings have surged back ahead and no one is playing dwarves. I dunno. Could be. Obviously, without more information, it's pretty hard to make any actual decision. But, again, since halflings are down at the bottom of the barrel, and always have been, right from the word go back in 1974, maybe, just maybe it might be time to give something else a try? It's not like there was some huge time of halfling popularity. They've never been particularly commonly played.

At 5.9%, that means a typical group (which is 5 players, not 6 as @doctorbadwolf tries to claim) will have a halfling in the group 1 group in 4.

The only reason we're having this discussion at all is the Gnome Effect. Removing halflings might impact up to 25% of tables, so, that's a large enough number that we have to keep them in, even though they are basically just dead weight. Exactly the same conversations we had in 4e when they pulled gnomes.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It's straight from this site: You can find it in the news on Enworld: Humans, Fighters, and Life Domain Most Popular On D&D Beyond

So, yes, it's backed up with a pretty solid source.

View attachment 140272

You mean this thing according to which the halflings are not the least popular PHB race and there are no non-PHB races more popular than them?