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

[Oofta]

This is a pretty silly prediction. You really think there is a significant crossover audience here?

I mean I can say that the 5e goblin mechanics are a lot stronger than the halflings', but they're not really even in the same thematic zip code.

But ... they're both small! That's everything you need to know about the theme of a race, right?

 

[lingual]

This is a pretty silly prediction. You really think there is a significant crossover audience here?

I mean I can say that the 5e goblin mechanics are a lot stronger than the halflings', but they're not really even in the same thematic zip code.

There will be two races in the next edition.

One for 4 feet and under. One for everything else.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

How to do that while leaving room for new races that have a lot of traction?

The number of pages in the PHB aren't set in stone. The number of races should probably increase to about a dozen. In fact, I'd say that it's a good idea to have a PHB with;

Human
Elf
Dwarf
Halfling
Orc
Gnome
Goliath
Genasi
Tabaxi
Dragonborn
Tiefling
Custom/Variant

Half-orc and half-elf can either be subraces, or be included in "Custom/Variant"

Even without considering the halfling debate, I think it is fair to recognize that certain non-PHB races have a lot of traction, and would likely get even more traction if they were in the PHB and there was less of a barrier of entry to playing them. I’m thinking genasi (already in the top 10), aasimar (12th despite being a pay-to-play race) and tabaxi (going from the massive amount of fan art I’ve seen online and also being a pay-to-play race).

This is the main reason I’ve pushed back so hard on the “halflings are in the top 9 of 40” argument. It doesn’t make sense to compare races that are shipped with ever PHB with races that you have to pay extra to play. What is more, doing so is a recipe for defending the status quo for being the status quo.

It doesn't really matter why Halflings are popular, they are. Being on the "low" end of popular doesn't change that. They're also part of the game's identity, and important to be playable for a lot of gamers. By which I mean that for a lot of people who play halflings, being able to play a Small Folk is really important to their desire to even play DnD.

• Removing gnomes but saving as much as can be in the halfling heading would be an idea worth exploring and I think would add to both concepts.

How would removing gnomes add to gnomes, exactly?

• There's no need to even remove gnomes. The space used isn't huge

This, however, is true. The space required for each race is quite....small.

A light crossbow is 25 gp. That’s like 2 years’ wages to a farmer.

Even the ammo is 1GP for 20 bolts. Another reason halflings use slings is that a sling is 1sp and 20 sling bullets are 4cp. Paying to outfit a militia is not cheap, but giving everyone a sling and telling them to practice is. Again, practical and effective but not flashy.

Yep, and historically, slings are very effective. They're sold way short in 5e.

I disagree with this, as to me, being small is not a niche.

It objectively is. A niche isn't a matter of opinion, only questions of whether a niche is good or worthwhile or whatever are. Small Folk are a commonly desired niche.

1) WotC is now afraid to remove anything from the core PH after everyone started pretending they liked gnomes to attack 4e.

No meaningful number of people did that.

Which is little stronger for e.g. ranger than Forest Gnomes (+2 Int, +1 Dex). You can make your primary stat a 16 either way which is the key thing. And yet despite the strong stat synergy and complete thematic synergy for forest gnome rangers in 2017 halfling rangers were crushing gnome rangers by a margin of almost 2:1.

Oh come on. This is a silly argument. Insofar as stats and synergy impact race choice (and we know from ddb data that it really doesn't, as Bradford let us know that basic human remains on the top even when only looking at people who could be making a variant human, not to mention the class data where Champion Fighter is the most common class even when only looking at people with paid content unlocked), the +2 of a given race is probably the most impactful part of the race's mechanics.

Playing a Halfling Ranger is more appealing than playing a Forest Gnome Ranger because the Halfling has +2 Dex on top of strong general features. I love my FGnome Rogue/Bladesinger, but if that build had needed a different second high stat from Int, he'd be harder to play.

To be fair a few of them were telling the truth.

No, most of us were. A vanishingly small sliver of people were pretending in order to attack 4e. I genuinely doubt that said phenomenon literally existed in any significant number. If you knew someone who did that, you basically knew the one guy.

I also strongly suspect that gnomes will see a rise in play on ddb as more and more people get Tasha's and can make a +2 dex, wis, str, cha, gnome. Especially Forest Gnome, but Rock Gnome is already in the top half of races without that freedom, in spite of being a couple of literal ribbons layered on the base Gnome race package, so they'll probably stay inexplicably ahead of the more interesting Forest Gnome.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

This is a pretty silly prediction. You really think there is a significant crossover audience here?

I mean I can say that the 5e goblin mechanics are a lot stronger than the halflings', but they're not really even in the same thematic zip code.

Seriously! Goblins are fairly popular, sure, and kobolds have their fans, but even with the current Monster...liker...zeitgeist in fantasy fandom, they aren't on the same level as halflings, and neither of them even actually fill the same niche as gnomes. Especially Kobolds. Playing a reptile person is very different in feel from playing someone with a human-ish face.

 

[Faolyn]

Drow elves develop the Dancing Lights cantrip, and use Charisma for it.
High elves develop any Wizard cantrip, and use Intelligence for it.

The same mechanical wording is for both of these elven magical traits. The Players Handbook does not specify if this elven magic is innate or learned. It can be that the High Elf innately uses Intelligence for magic, or the Drow Elf learns to use Charisma for magic.

It's pretty straightforward throughout all of D&D since 3x that Intelligence is for learned spells and Charisma is for innate.

Because elves are magical and descend from fey ancestry, one can infer this elven magic trait is innate, or at least conveys an innate aptitude for magic. In any case, this is magic that the elves master while still growing up, even before they gain level 1 in their mage class. Elves as a people wield heavy magic, and it matters less whether the magic is nature or nurture. I assume there is an elven instinct for magic, but even if so, it is the elven culture that encourages each elf to learn to develop it, while young, and to continue to pursue greater magic as they mature.

So where is wood elf magic? Or sea elf magic? They don't have any innate magic.

And you'll notice that in the "NPC Stat Blocks" section of the DMG (page 282), where they give you mini-templates to help you create NPCs of non-human races, that elves do not gain any sort of casting, but drow do. And so do tieflings. So apparently D&D assumes that high elves learn their magic and it's not innate, but part of being a drow elf or a tiefling is having innate magic.

 

[Neonchameleon]

There will be two races in the next edition.

One for 4 feet and under. One for everything else.

One for 4 feet and under. One for six feet under and well tamped down.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Where does Wis come into anything? The Forest Gnome is +1 Dex, the Lightfoot Halfling is +1 Cha. And +1 is enough to get a primary stat of 16 on dex for the gnome so it's only a very slight lead. (Int and Cha are equally useless for most builds of ranger).

Sorry! Brain fart. I thought forest was +1 Wis. Still +2 Dex, +1 Cha or Con is still better than +1 Dex, +2 to a dump stat.

 

[Faolyn]

The number of pages in the PHB aren't set in stone. The number of races should probably increase to about a dozen. In fact, I'd say that it's a good idea to have a PHB with;

Human
Elf
Dwarf
Halfling
Orc
Gnome
Goliath
Genasi
Tabaxi
Dragonborn
Tiefling
Custom/Variant

Plus there's no reason to assume that 6e would include subraces. They could make those into cultures, or just give each race options (say, one fighter-y option, one magic-y option, one sneaky or "other" option).

 

[Neonchameleon]

How would removing gnomes add to gnomes, exactly?

Because it's hard to be a trickster if everyone knows you're a trickster because you wrote "race of small magical tricksters" on your character sheet. If you make gnomes a subrace of halflings then you aren't advertising that aspect of gnomery

 

[Faolyn]

@Faolyn (bold mine to make the differences between your claims stand out) ((Note, I do realize it's a REALLY fast moving thread, so, I totally understand why you might have missed this.))


So, which is it? Short changed, overlooked and ignored, as @Neonchameleon claims or well used and present in several settings as you claim?

When you guys figure out which it is, you let me know.

I don't see a contradiction between "not often used in adventures" and "played by many gamers" and "used in many settings." Adventures aren't settings; they take place in settings, but they aren't settings in and of themselves. So where's the contradiction you claim exists?

I personally disagree with the claim that they're rarely used in adventures, since they do show up as NPCs a great deal. Unless @Neonchameleon means that they're rarely used as antagonists or as the main victims of the antagonists. I would have to completely agree with that. Of course, most antagonists are humans, monsters, or of an evil NPC race that got turned into a PC race, like drow or orcs, so it's not surprising you rarely see BBEGs who are halflings--or wood/high elves, or dwarfs, or whatever.