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

[Yaarel]

There are no elven farmboys. That would require an elf to:

A. Work
B. Get dirty

And do that for decades..at a minimum..

No F-ing way.

Heh, for me, Elves.Dont.Farm.

The High Elves live in homes among the branches of magically cultivated trees, and eat from tree products like leaves, bark, fruits, and berries.

The Wild Elf are nomads who hunt and gather.

The Uda Drow eat mushrooms but have slaves do the farming for it.

The Alfar are sunlight. Sunlight doesnt eat. When Alfar manifest in a humanlike form, they tend to hunt and gather, and can prepare marvelous meals from this.

 

[Yaarel]

Jasper, Moorea, Niagara, etc - all described as ethereal beauty by real humans. Additionally, humans within D&D can live in fantastic lands, everyone can. That's the power of fantasy. Put an orc in a land of ethereal beauty and they don't become an elf.

In D&D "ethereal" means ethereal, literally. The Ethereal Plane.

It refers to places where the veils between the planes are thin.

In context it moreorless means magically beautiful, but it continues the innate nature of the elf as nonhuman and "otherworldly".

 

[BRayne]

Bro that’s live viewership of a show that is regularly 4 hours long, with VOD, YouTube, and podcast, options.

If there is confirmation bias at work here, it’s not on my end.

And yeah, “a few million views per episode”, even if those charts showed us all consumption, would be plenty to prove my point.

That chart is Youtube VOD views, not live

 

[carkl3000]

Yeah, every lineage is practicably a heightened sense of someway of being a human.

The problem is, the halfling is simply a human. There is no heightening.

Sure there is. Their folksiness and non aggression is heightened.

 

[Yaarel]

Sure there is. Their folksiness and non aggression is heightened.

Heh, apparently you dont know the people who I know.

Even hippies and folksingers and peacenicks are humans.

 

[Don Durito]

Sure there is. Their folksiness and non aggression is heightened.

Their shortness is also heightened.

Or er...shortened.

 

[carkl3000]

But most humans dont build cities or empires or complex political structures, or companies, or so on.

Most humans, like most halflings, participate in these institutions that other people built.





Honestly, I think this "dont know, dont care" angle, is a way to "heighten" the behavior of the halfling lineage. But the Players Handbook doesnt go there.

Heh, "dont know, dont care" is a way to explain how a good natured and well meaning culture can be Rogues. But again, the Players Handbook doesnt go there.

I'm sorry, there's clearly a cultural difference between a race that founded Waterdeep and a race whose largest settlement ever was a port city of 27,000 souls.

 

[Yaarel]

I'm sorry, there's clearly a cultural difference between a race that founded Waterdeep and a race whose largest settlement ever was a port city of 27,000 souls.

And halflings are part of both of them!

Way too human!

 

[Oofta]

5e doesnt have "demihuman". All are "humanoid".

Let me go thru the PH.

Dragonborn: indeed born of transformed dragon eggs.

Elf indeed come from an alternate dimension (Feywild), from magic, and identify with the natural world. (Is a demihuman.)

Tiefling indeed come from an "ancient sin" inflicting an "infernal heritage" from trafficking with fiends.

I also find the 5e Dwarf problematic, but at least their subterranean culture is distinctive.

And so on.

The Halfling alone is completely human with a completely human culture. (Is an old school demihuman.)

None of that is in the PHB. Maybe for specific campaign setting, it's not the default.

 

[Faolyn]

Elves come from an alternate dimension to meld with the natural world, born from powerful magics.

Warforged is artificially engineered to be a weapon of war, who (accidentally?) came to life.

Tiefling transmogrified from trafficking with fiends, and the descendants bear the mark of ancient transgression.

Dragonborn were hatched from magically transformed dragon eggs.

Genasi were mutated by mystical elemental energies.

Halflings hang out with humans at the local pub in the farming hamlet.

Well then, it's nice to have a race that's a change of pace, isn't it?

(Also, what about aarakocra, bugbears, centaurs, dwarfs, firbolg, goliaths, gnomes, goblins, grung, hobgoblins, humans, kobolds, leonin, minotaurs, orcs, satyrs, tabaxi, and tritons?)