I'm not. I'm relying on defaulting to slings. Not on 100% of slings.
So then what is the issue with my proposal?
And they find just about nothing nothing; you don't attack looking for prey when the prey isn't there. The halflings are all in their concealed burrows under hills and behind extremely solid doors. They can't burn the ground. They can't find halflings to attack and kill. And they're dealing with concealed and reinforced doors and fighting in places deliberately too small for them at best.
Gnolls average over 7' tall while halflings average around 3' tall. This means that halflings, especially those living in hostile environments, are going to make their ceilings about 3'6" tall. It's a simple, practical defensive measure that means that gnolls and other tallfolk will be crawling 100% of the time and once the first gnoll is killed the ones behind it have to haul its corpse out for the next one to enter. Attacking a human fort would be more fun.
1) How did the halflings notice the gnolls approaching in the dark to the point where they are already hidden in a completely fortified location?
2) What do you mean "extremely solid doors"? Where is this coming from? Even if it is a really strong wooden door, it is likely a DC 15. Gnolls have a +2 strength and the help action. Breaking down the door isn't that hard.
3) Why would you burn the ground? You shoot flaming arrows through the windows of the house, and set fire to the inside of it. Or, if you are really fancy, you do set fire to the the grass, and create a whole bunch of smoke. Potentially killing halflings that way.
4) Wait, now the doors are extremely solid, reinforced, and concealed?
5) Yeah, I covered squeezing. A gnoll can fit into a small space, like that 3 ft ceiling you mentioned. They have disadvantage on attacks and advantage on being hit. "The first gnoll to be killed" assumes that a gnoll in melee killing two halflings a round is killed before they kill all the halflings. Since the gnoll broke in, unless it is killed that turn, it kill two halflings, How many are bunched together in this single house?
You seemed to have just assumed that halfling homes are impossible to breach, with their glass windows and wooden doors. And that somehow the squeezing rules make a gnoll helpless. That isn't how that would work.
And I'm saying the halfling strategy works better than the human one. Especially because human ceilings have to be at least 6' tall to accommodate humans, so the homes aren't an inherent defence against gnolls.
You need to review the Squeezing rules. Halfling homes aren't an inherent defense. And then humans should also get slings and default to having slings available. It is the best way to defend themselves and it isn't like they wouldn't want to do that. They are all hyper-ambitious heroes who want to leave their mark on history, remember?
Oh, and to just run the numbers on squeezing. Half speed is 15ft, reach 5 ft, more if they can throw. If there is a halfling within 20 ft of the door, then the gnoll can stab them, then move up to half their speed, that would be 7.5 ft, so if I don't round that is reaching a second halfling if they are within 27.5 ft. of the door. Now, I can't say for certain how large a halfling home is, but since it is half the size of a human home, and 30 ft gets you basically anywhere in my house you care to be (living room is 16 ft, hallway is 19 ft) I'd assume that nearly 30 ft covers the halfling abode pretty clearly.
These are in practice what the halflings have in their normal low key and practical way.
1: Universal weapon training: Sling. It's not recorded in the PHB because every single class is proficient with slings anyway, so it would be entirely redundant (halflings in previous editions had bonuses with slings so the affinity has long been part of D&D lore)
2: Severe terrain advantage: Low ceilings.
Now the severe terrain advantage doesn't apply to goblins and kobolds. But it definitely does to gnolls.
#2 is false.
#1 is also false. Not every single person in the world is proficient with the sling. Yes, all PC classes are, but not all halflings are PCs. And, while halflings in previous editions had some affinity for slings, it seems to no longer be the case. Could be interesting to bring back, I do think the sling needs more love, but I'm working from the current version of halflings using slings.
Because
1: Humans don't have universal weapon training in most cultures. Halflings are more community oriented.
2: Other weapons are better than slings. One person with a shortbow is more dangerous than one person with a sling.
The point about slings is that anyone can carry a sling just about all the time. Halfling warriors tend to go for shortbows over slings because they are better weapons . But bows are (a) expensive and (b) get in the way when you are trying to go about your day. Slings are small, light, unobtrusive and mean that you are armed. They put you in the game.
#1 is only true if your previous #1 is false. So, which is it? does everyone in the world have proficiency in slings, or do only haflings have proficiency in slings? You can't be arguing both. You have to make a call. Either everyone is, and that includes humans, or not everyone is, and halflings are no more likely to have proficiency than others.
Yes, you can rewrite them to give them all sling proficiency, but that is rewriting them to give them a weapon proficiency, the thing that most people frown on.
Also, for
@bedir than and others following along, note that I didn't bring up weapon proficiencies. All of my numbers where generated assuming no proficiency bonus. Neonchameleon is the one bringing that up first.
4.5*1.5 = 6.75 and 6.75> 6.5
I take exception to you saying "double the damage" when you're doing less than 1.5 times the damage. If you'd said 1.5 times then I'd have no problem. But if we're using normal rounding and only going to one significant figure then you round numbers less than 1.5 down to 1.
"One and a half times the damage" would be a good approximation. "About the same damage" would be pushing it but just about fair.
I see you cut it off before the range and accuracy calculations that were 2 slings = 1 light crossbow.
But whatever, be pendantic about it. A light crossbow does 1.3846 times the damage of a sling. It still cuts the number of attacks pretty close to in half, because you can't make a 0.3846th of an attack.
And, just to show my work. 22/4.5 = 4.8888 -> 5 attacks by rounding up
22/6.5 = 3.3846 -> 3 attacks by rounding down. I could round them both up. but this is an average, and we all know that the average isn't going to be exact. And it is easier to make up a 0.3846 in attacks that a 0.8888
Also, when we add in accuracy, the sling has an accuracy of 25%, while the crossbow was 40%. And if I add those in like so
22/(4.5*0.25) = 19.5555 -> 20
22/ (6.5*0.4) = 8.4615 -> 8
Damage AND range to avoid more disadvantage is fairly impactful. Oh, and is we assume night and disadvantage anyways
22/(6.5*0.25) = 13.5384 -> 14 attacks. Not double, but reducing the raw number of attacks by 30% is significant enough I'd say.