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

[Scribe]

okay sure yes, individual exceptions within the species exist, but on a whole species wide basis, you get the point i'm making.

I probably get the point, but mine still remains. The fantasy races are not intended to be 'anything is possible'. They just arent. Its not comparable to you know, reality, and humanity, because 'humanity' fills every niche and trope in our world because well, we dont have a race of half giants (no, Iceland doesnt count) or a race of beings who never grow beyond the size of a toddler.

Thats kind of the point of fantasy races. "What if there were people, but instead of being as variable as humanity is in reality, they were as different to us, as a dog is from a lion?"

The ongoing trend to just remove that distinction, leads to the general 'bland' state we have going on. A halfling is never going to hold down the A gap against 2 NFL offensive linemen because the halfling is a bloody toddler, and is going to get yeeted off the field.

do you mean a human nfl or a halfing one I assume they would just have differnt Leagues?

They quite clearly would have to have a different league if we want to apply any kind of sensible logic. Then again, perhaps in your world, football is more like Bloodbowl, or perhaps you subscribe to the idea that a halfling can somehow be 2 feet tall, 40 lbs soaking wet, and yet can hold his ground in the face of a combined 600 lbs, and two guys over 6 feet tall.

Not an idea I'll ever accept, but hey 'its fantasy'.

 

[Neonchameleon]

isn't it kind of a bit hard to declare that human physiology doesn't define us when there's no other directly comparible sapient species on our planet? humans aren't special to humans because human is the baseline, we exist in a vacuum, the fact that basically any one of us can sit down and given enough effort learn practically any skill might be absolutely wild to a species with a biological caste system like insects do

The answer to that is that almost all D&D species are so close to humans that I think that this doesn't apply. They are almost all bipedal, ~ 50% female, child raising, social creatures. They are all almost without exception based on the same broad post-sapience evolutionary strategy. So let's imagine some plausible ones that aren't.

"Sapient octopods". Real world octopus intelligence is basically capped in usefulness. They are immensely clever as a species, but they also reproduce through plankton and do not raise their young. This means that there is neither a need nor a drive for them to develop a language, which means that every octopus needs to work everything out from scratch and there's a limit to how far they can get. Or how far it's even worth getting. But what if there wasn't. What if there was some sort of mad magician who decided to give octopuses the gift of language and put on magical classes for them in a safe zone. So you now have an entire species with, for practical purposes, both intelligence and no familial bonds. And a weird non-bipedal invertibrate physiology unlike the minor differences between ogres, goblins, and genasi.

"Giant clothed mole rats". The naked mole rat is one of the very few eusocial mammals; that is a mammal where there is one reproductive female in the entire colony, maybe three males allowed to mate with them, and the entire rest of the colony is never going to have offspring so family bonds are weird as are gender politics. (This, on a tangent, is how Warhammer Skaven work). Family ties and clan bonds become different. And with it so do interactions.

Warforged. Created for a purpose.

But elves, dwarves, and orcs have never been that alien. They've always been flanderised aspects of humans.

 

[CleverNickName]

On another note. I will never, could never, even if I dedicated 1000000% of my time to it, become an NFL defensive nose tackle.

And neither could a Halfling.

Whereas, my point is that a Halfling doesn't need to be a professional defensive lineman in the NFL in order to have fun playing football.

 

[Scribe]

Whereas, my point is that a Halfling doesn't need to be a professional defensive lineman in the NFL in order to have fun playing football.

Absolutely. The idea that if one is not playing at the caliber of the NFL elite, then they are not worth playing, is a false one.

 

[Oofta]

okay sure yes, individual exceptions within the species exist, but on a whole species wide basis, you get the point i'm making.

Back in ye olden days a dwarf could literally not be a wizard. Starting with 3.0 the racial limits were removed, even if we still had penalties.

Now there's no limits, no penalties. There's nothing stopping a dwarf becoming a wizard. Rolling for ability scores generally has more of an impact if you choose that option.

 

[CreamCloud0]

The answer to that is that almost all D&D species are so close to humans that I think that this doesn't apply. They are almost all bipedal, ~ 50% female, child raising, social creatures. They are all almost without exception based on the same broad post-sapience evolutionary strategy. So let's imagine some plausible ones that aren't.

"Sapient octopods". Real world octopus intelligence is basically capped in usefulness. They are immensely clever as a species, but they also reproduce through plankton and do not raise their young. This means that there is neither a need nor a drive for them to develop a language, which means that every octopus needs to work everything out from scratch and there's a limit to how far they can get. Or how far it's even worth getting. But what if there wasn't. What if there was some sort of mad magician who decided to give octopuses the gift of language and put on magical classes for them in a safe zone. So you now have an entire species with, for practical purposes, both intelligence and no familial bonds. And a weird non-bipedal invertibrate physiology unlike the minor differences between ogres, goblins, and genasi.

"Giant clothed mole rats". The naked mole rat is one of the very few eusocial mammals; that is a mammal where there is one reproductive female in the entire colony, maybe three males allowed to mate with them, and the entire rest of the colony is never going to have offspring so family bonds are weird as are gender politics. (This, on a tangent, is how Warhammer Skaven work). Family ties and clan bonds become different. And with it so do interactions.

Warforged. Created for a purpose.

But elves, dwarves, and orcs have never been that alien. They've always been flanderised aspects of humans.

sorry, i may have missed or misinterpreted what the core of the discussion was about? i was under the assumption it was about, if not specifically fixed ASI, at least about having certain traits that heavily incline them to be good at certain roles, and that humans are percieved as not being biologically inclined to any role due to being our own baseline.

 

[James Gasik]

I've always kinda wondered about this "whack-a-mole" thing. How long are your combats that this is actually an issue? For all the years I've played or DM'd 5e, combat's pretty generally over by round 4 or 5 at the most. Figure that no one (usually) goes down in the first two rounds, that means that someone might go below zero HP in round 3. Pick them up in round 4. Combat's done.

It's not so much "whack a mole" as just ... well... whack.

Like a lot of criticisms, I find that when the rubber meets the road, these theorycrafted issues just don't happen. Or, don't happen often enough that it needs to be fixed.

I see it quite a lot, and the reason is, simply put, that most DM's don't want to run low-challenge encounters, which are supposed to be the most common type of encounter. They'd rather use most of their xp budget on big, challenging setpiece encounters, which of course, means that the enemies can rather easily knock a player to 0 hit points. I saw it in Adventure League adventures, I saw it in home games, where you only have time for 1-3 fights per session, and I'm seeing it now in the megadungeon I'm playing in (Scarlet Citadel, by Kobold Press).

When you have limited time, and want to have the game to be exciting, this happens. Because something like "you come upon three orcs in a room", which, by rights, ought to be a standard encounter, you barely need to bust out the dice.

And even in an easy encounter, enemies can be dangerous if they focus fire: in my last 5e session (that I was playing in), we actually came upon a room full of goblins. It lasted 3 rounds, but only because our first turn was spent getting past a barricade. The goblins were easy opponents, but the Ranger still went to 0 hit points because they were the first person to get past the barricade, and they got shot full of arrows for their trouble!

So yeah, I pretty much see someone healed from 0 in at least half of all encounters. I can't imagine my experience is all that unique.

 

[James Gasik]

Completely agree with garbage rules.

Penalties for size should be much bigger. 3E style.

3e at least gave bonuses for size as well though, balancing things out.

 

[James Gasik]

Not really?

4e Healing healed a quarter of your total plus some. It did more than a single enemy hit would and thus was worth actually doing outside of people being downed. It was also usually a minor action so you weren't blowing your entire turn to do it.

5e really, really wanted to force out of combat healing without giving a care to how people actually play the game. So you have people desperately trying to make healing 'count' because it blows your action and actively sucks in combat.

Well I just meant the whole "guy went down, heal them up from 0 and they're fine" aspect. Yes, healing was better in 4e, but you could still have whack a mole fights, and in fact, I saw it happen fairly often because most players would rather perform offensive actions on their turn and be brought up by the leader rather than use second wind or give a second's thought to their defenses, lol.

I still remember the time I was the only leader in a D&D Encounters adventure (a Death Priest in the Shadowfell season). There was a Rogue who kept running in, getting dropped to 0, I'd heal them, and they'd immediately go down again. During one big fight, he went down and cried for me to heal him.

"No."

"NO?!"

"I've used one Healing Word this encounter. I have one left. We have a Fighter who is keeping most of the enemies occupied. My heal is going to be saved to keep him alive so we don't die."

The Rogue's player eventually failed his death saves and he left, never to be seen again. I got the stigma of being the "stingy Cleric", lol.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Well I just meant the whole "guy went down, heal them up from 0 and they're fine" aspect. Yes, healing was better in 4e, but you could still have whack a mole fights, and in fact, I saw it happen fairly often because most players would rather perform offensive actions on their turn and be brought up by the leader rather than use second wind or give a second's thought to their defenses, lol.

That's just the thing though: since combat healing was reasonable and a Minor action, there was no reason to sit and wait until they went down.

Whack a mole could happen, but it happened way less because the aggravating elements meant to encourage out of combat healing and using the the buzzword 'Hit Dice' to aim for the nostalgia feels weren't there.