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

[Chaosmancer]

4e, of course being the only edition where I found gnomes interesting enough to want to play, magical enough to be something other than either a halfling playing dress-up or a dwarf on a diet, and exotic enough to be worthy of the name gnome.

I've alway preferred their 4e art. Not keeping their lore, even though it was cool, but that art was stellar

 

[HomegrownHydra]

would it not be easier if they made so basic NPS templates and book races just slot together for ease of just generating an NPC? it is not like they make it easy to replicate the feel of an npc being of a class which would be nice for upping the danger of monsters fast.

I don't understand how this relates to what I said.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I certainly tend to approach my D&D more simulationistically than perhaps is the average, but I have to say the multipage argument about what is 'realistic' in fiction by simulating NPC vs. NPC battles with exact game mechanics is taking it to the next level! Sorry, but this simply is not the sort of thing the rules were designed to handle. If the plot requires the gnolls to be serious threat to the halflings, they are. If the plot requires the halflings to routinely defeat the gnolls, the do.

 

[HomegrownHydra]

Two reasons

1) Flipping a coin is too swingy

2) If it ever becomes a large scale NPC vs NPC battle with PCs involved, then I am going to have to take this sort of thing into account. Like, if I'm describing the NPCs turns, and I say that the halfling slinger kills the Gnoll in a single shot, and the player shoots a heavy crossbow and the gnoll is still standing... won't that dissonance matter?

So why hand wave everything, and set-up expectations, then have the expectations ruined when it actually matters because I didn't bother to at least try and match up the game to the reality? And no, I'm not talking about hyper-realism here, just taking the game mechanics as face value and setting up the scenario based on that.

I must be completely mistaken about the point of this particular discussion. I thought the gnoll raider/halfling slinger discussion was about how to make the halfling culture distinct in a way that makes sense within the fiction. Are you saying it's really about a game scenario that would be played out using the standard game mechanics? How would that work? Would the players be playing the halflings villagers?

 

[Mind of tempest]

I certainly tend to approach my D&D more simulationistically than perhaps is the average, but I have to say the multipage argument about what is 'realistic' in fiction by simulating NPC vs. NPC battles with exact game mechanics is taking it to the next level! Sorry, but this simply is not the sort of thing the rules were designed to handle. If the plot requires the gnolls to be serious threat to the halflings, they are. If the plot requires the halflings to routinely defeat the gnolls, the do.

yeah, that gets tricky I personally only want it at the small scale of like ten or slightly more people foe groups as sometimes it is the little things that make things work.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Not only can you already do that, as a GM it's sort of your job to do that.

There isnt a prewritten "Lego brick" that you always use to make X an elf or halfling, but it's pretty much part of the 5e design that you are free to improvise the monster stat blocks because NPC/monster build rules is explicitly said to be different than PC build rules.

In 3e they had the system you are asking for, where everything is a Lego brick and you can make whatever you want following the same res as building a PC While that was "fair" in a sense to keep everything on par, it's also was a LOT of work on the GMs part.

improves on the fly is hard hence my desire for a quicker system to do it, I do not need everything just things where race would matter, also stripped down npc stat blocks of player classes of the different tires for a mirror match.

 

[Gammadoodler]

By giving all halfling commoners a feat meant for extremely skilled archers, beyond what a trained archer can do?

Why is it so hard to just let them use crossbows? Country people today have guns. Luke Skywalker had a flying ship with a cannon at his farm in star wars. Yet it is utterly concept breaking for a halfling to have the equivalent level of weaponry in the crossbow? You'd rather that they have an extreme level of training that is equivalent to a 4th level character just so they can use slings instead?

Because your fundamental issue is really all about the weapons table and has very little to do with halflings.

So saying something like "halflings ignore the long range increment (and/or partial cover) when using slings" reinforces the fiction, takes away your weapon table issue, and doesn't dramatically change how powerful they are, since, as you mentioned, they could just use a better weapon.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yet, funnily you'll keep telling me how wrong I am and argue with every point I make, but, the person sitting next to you, who is telling you you are 100% wrong, thus your argument is completely wrong (after all, he's claimed REPEATEDLY that you are wrong and that halflings are well supported outside of the core books) gets not so much as a whisper of discussion from you.

So, which point would you like me to talk about? Because you can't both be right. So, you tell me, how am I supposed to carry a conversation with people who claim mutually exclusive facts but completely agree with each other?

Again, you folks sort your stuff out and let me know because, well, right now it's punching fog. If I agree with you, I'm 100% wrong according to @Faolyn, and, if I agree with @Faolyn, you can claim that I'm wrong. Either way, I'm wrong. And, I'm being accused of arguing in bad faith?

We aren’t obligated to agree just to make it easier for you to keep track of the discussion.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Wait, what? You figure that a halfling commoner is now a FOURTH level character? Sorry, but halflings don't get feats.

This is exactly why people lose patience with you.

no, they very clearly did not say anything like that.

 

[Hussar]

Is because it's massively effected by confirmation bias. Things like you assume halflings are only at their current level of popularity because of the basic rules due to the fact that you cannot conceive of people liking them despite... you know, this thread.

Oh, no, I get that there are people that like them. Again, it's not about liking or disliking. It's that not enough people like them. If lots of people liked them, they wouldn't be scraping the bottom of the PHB barrel. So, sure, there are people that like them. Me? I'm a bit more blasé. I can take them or leave them. They don't really engender any real strong emotion in any direction because, well, as I said, I've so rarely seen them played.

I actually took the time to think about my 5e experience. I've either played or run in 8 campaigns since 5e started. We've done some concurrent campaigns, alternating weeks, so, in addition to myself, there have been two other DM's. So, 8 campaigns, 5 players, figure, 50 (ish) PC's, what with PC's dying, being replaced, or whatever. Out of 50 PC's over 7 years, I've seen two Halfling PC's. So, by the stats that we have, my group is dead on average. Well, I suppose you could make an argument that we should have had a 3rd halfling, depending on how you want to round the numbers, but, it's pretty close. So, 6 out of 8 campaigns would have been totally unaffected by removing halflings. And, 2 campaigns would have been slightly inconvenienced when one player would have had to open the DMG instead of the PHB to play a halfling. Oh noes. The horror of having to look in a different core book to play a concept. I'm not sure the player could have ever recovered from that.

So, no, it's not really confirmation bias. It's simply recognizing that halflings (and gnomes) aren't terribly popular and moving them to the DMG to make room for fresh idea, OR, doing something which results in making halflings more popular (I'm groovy with either way. I just don't think the second one is very likely given that in 40 years of the game, they've never succeeded) is a far better option than doing nothing just because there is a very vocal but very tiny minority of gamers that can't see past their own preferences.