D&D 5E Halflings are the 7th most popular 5e race

[Scribe]

I have, but only casually. It has a few design choices I'm rather iffy about.

I think it has a lot to offer you, they are taking it further afield than I want to go, but yeah was just wondering.

 

[bedir than]

In theory its the same access, but in practice not everyone knows EEPG exists.

When you click on Create Character on DnD Beyond there's no indication at all that they are from different sourcebooks. You are asked to choose race and the full set of Elemental Evil supplement and PHB supplement are presented with nothing distinguishing them

 

[MGibster]

I think the "our elves are different" trope has become so all-pervasive that there isn't much point in providing lore for races, since it's going to get changed anyway.

I really think you need something for new players. I'd wager that most people who get into table top role playing games do so through D&D. We all know what a human is, but what's being an elf, halfling, or dwarf all about? For those of us who have been playing for a while those questions might not need answering. For new players though, they probably need some guidance.

It really didn't help that the 5e halfling art is of melonheads and absolutely makes them look freakish. You can't undersell how bad that art probably turned off new players to that race.

It's enough to drive a man to play a gnome.

Warhammer, at least the fantasy one. I don't know much about Warhammer Fantasy to say more, but what I've seen paints its dwarves as exceptionally stereotypical.

Yeah, but you could have a trollslayer dwarf who wore very little clothes and had a kickbutt mohawk!

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I've never, ever met someone who was a crusader for "bland generic abilities" or "user-friendliness." No one. Not once.

You certain of that? I ask, because they’ve been in threads in these forums within the last few years.

They don’t use those terms, but the specific phrases aren’t the point. Plenty of folks think that D&D should be more user-friendly and have mechanics that are open to interpretation, even if that makes them more “gamist” or whatever.

But regardless, the point the user was making is that it’s an odd thing to be infuriated by. We all have things we really don’t want the game to do, mostly without getting infuriated by people who want those things just as strongly as we want them to not be present.

Like…your whole rant about being infuriated by it comes across like you believe that your preferences are objectively better than those of the verisimilitude crowd.

 

[MGibster]

I've never, ever met someone who was a crusader for "bland generic abilities" or "user-friendliness." No one. Not once.

Nobody's going to say they're going to bat for bland generic abilities, but when you lobby to get rid of species modified ability scores that's exactly what you're doing. It means there is less to differentiate between an elf, human, goliath, and halfing which means species are more generic.

 

[Mistwell]

And the fact that even a single request for "hey, maybe usability, excitement, or balance could be a consideration that sometimes is just a little bit more important than absolute and unyielding fealty to 'verisimilitude' über alles" gets met with "oh, so you want the gamw to be bland, generic, flavorless mush that means nothing, has no story, and turns everything into samey garbage, well not on MY watch buddy!" is EXACTLY why I find this so infuriating.

You literally cannot even criticize excessive commitment to "verisimilitude" in the smallest degree without being accused of wanting to destroy the game.

It would help your case if you didn't resort to that sort of hyperbole in mischaracterizing what others are saying. You've taken strawman to an entirely new level with that response.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Nobody's going to say they're going to bat for bland generic abilities, but when you lobby to get rid of species modified ability scores that's exactly what you're doing. It means there is less to differentiate between an elf, human, goliath, and halfing which means species are more generic.

"we're not asking for generic abilities we just want abilities that don't favour any specific classes or builds because then that'd be unfair on the players who don't want to play those builds with those species"

um, okay,
i'm not really sure you can get anything other than generic abilities if you want them to be equally applicable for everyone.

 

[MGibster]

um, okay,
i'm not really sure you can get anything other than generic abilities if you want them to be equally applicable for everyone.

I'm not sure how you can accomplish that either. But then I don't believe equally applicable for everyone is a particularly desired outcome. i.e. I don't have a problem with the idea that halflings aren't going to be as strong as goliaths. Others disagree, and that's cool, because it doesn't infuriate me that others have different preferences. But I recognize that ship has sailed and bland generic abilities are currently in vogue.

 

[Lanefan]

What evidence is that? It’s exactly what we saw years ago. Halflings are the second least played race after gnomes.

Out of how many? Are you only considering the "core seven" from the 1e PH (I could easily see Hobbits being 5th of 7 here, beating Gnomes and Half-Orcs), or just those presented in the 5e PH, or all of the possibilities 5e has added since?

'Cause if you're including all the possibile PC-playable species 5e now has, Halflings being second-lowest and Gnomes being the outright lowest just don't make sense given all the niche species that have sprung up.

 

[Lanefan]

Hi, I created the dataset. I don't think custom lineage is represented well at all. "Lineage" is there as a race but I also filtered out any class with less than 5 occurrences since people use homebrew ones as well. I'm not sure if custom lineage is simply not used much (at least in my sample data) or if it is saved in a way that makes it not appear.

Instead of filtering those low-occurrence classes right out, would it be possible to batch them into an "Other/Homebrew" category?