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

[Vaalingrade]

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.

Until the designers just put in a rule that says they can't use footballs to make sure they can't.

 

[Lanefan]

They are not human--but they are sapient beings with self-determination and personal identity. Why is it their sapience, self-determination, and personal identity are always trumped by their physiology?

Because physiology is unavoidable.

Completely missing the point. I'm not saying every race should be "can do a bit of everything." I'm saying that every race that is capable of being a player character should have sapience, self-determination, and personal identity. Sapience being human-like awareness and intelligence: the ability to understand oneself as distinct from one's environment, to reason about the world around oneself, etc. Every playable species should have this trait in order to be, y'know, playable. Self-determination should, I hope, be self-evident, but just in case, it means the ability to make one's own choices for how one will live, what actions one will take, etc. (Obviously, some situations like dictatorial regimes or slavery or the like can severely degrade a person's ability to exercise their self-determination, but they have said determination nonetheless.) And, finally, a personal identity is individuation: all the personality quirks, verbal tics, tastes, preferences, dislikes, turns of phrase, etc. which make a person distinct from other people.

Agreed.

And none of that has anything to do with the fact that Dwarves are short, stocky, tough little things reflected (in my game anyway) by their having higher Con and Str, lower Dex, and a slower move rate.

Which means, if you-as-player want to play a Dwarf Thief then go ahead, but your choice of species is going to fight against your choice of class. I'd rather see this than a setup where all species can equally be all classes, as that means one or the other has been watered down to the "why bother" point.

If Dwarves possess sapience, self-determination, and personal identities, why is it their species is what makes them special? Doesn't that erase their individuality worse than the other way around?

That depends on perspective. Dwarves among Dwarves are as individual and diverse as are Humans among Humans. But in the larger picture there's (almost always physiological) things that distinguish one species from another, and those things are often going to impact the game-related abilities of those species, for better or worse.

Again: no it's not. Because you had to patch something in at the end, after everything was said and done, because the combination of those things would be broken. You had to ban something. That's--by definition--after the problem ("A wizard with too much health would be broken") has already happened. A Dwarf Wizard would be broken, therefore you are now forced to ban them. Cutting the problem off at the pass would be asking either, "How can we make Dwarves still be really robust--important for them in several other classes--without making Dwarf Wizards overpowered?" Or, though I don't think this would be as effective, "How can we make the Wizard generally balanced around physical frailty when some races bring strong (even, potentially, extreme) natural robustness that could completely eclipse that?"

To do that requires either nerfing all other Wizards or nerfing all other Dwarves. Why on earth would I want to do that when instead I can just pull out the proud nail and carry on?

As an example of the latter, consider the 13A Necromancer. One of its class features actually punishes you for having a positive Con modifier (and, if you invest feats into it later on, you can actually get bonuses for having a negative Con mod.) Something like that is a brilliant design move, because it doesn't force players to never play Dwarf Necromancers (for any reason, balance or otherwise), and instead gives them a reason why they shouldn't choose to do that. (or, well, it would in your game's model of stats. 13A stats work differently.)

Huh. Now that's got my interest. I'll have to keep that idea in mind - thanks.

 

[Lanefan]

Not seriously so. It just wasn't done after 3.0.

5e can handle mixed-level parties far better than either of the previous two editions. It's a strong mark in its favour IMO.

And the problem here wasn't balance. It was power scaling, especially in 3.X. The difference is that 3.X characters doubled in power about every two levels and 3.X was supposedly a 20 level game.

Indeed, 3e's power curve was way too steep.

oD&D (and for that matter 4e) characters doubled in power about every four levels and oD&D had 10 levels before the soft-cap while 4e supposedly had 30. You can be balanced and have extreme power scaling or imbalanced and have trivial power scaling.

Then why could oD&D handle mixed-level parties so much better than 4e? What other factors caused this?

 

[CleverNickName]

Until the designers just put in a rule that says they can't use footballs to make sure they can't.

That sounds more like something a group's DM would do, not the game designers. AFAICT, the rulebooks don't use hard racial restrictions anymore, and are even trending away from soft restrictions like penalties.

Ancient history: "Halflings can't use polearms."
Recent history: "Halflings have a -2 racial penalty to Strength, and can use specially-sized polearms."
Present day: "Halflings have disadvantage on attacks made with Heavy weapons."

Extrapolating from there, I expect Halflings will be able to do anything a dwarf can do in future editions.

 

[Vaalingrade]

That sounds more like something a group's DM would do, not the game designers. AFAICT, the rulebooks don't use hard racial restrictions anymore, and are even trending away from soft restrictions like penalties.

Ancient history: "Halflings can't use polearms."
Recent history: "Halflings have a -2 racial penalty to Strength, and can use specially-sized polearms."
Present day: "Halflings have disadvantage on attacks made with Heavy weapons."

Extrapolating from there, I expect Halflings will be able to do anything a dwarf can do in future editions.

An effective -5 to the attack is a harder restriction than -1 and -1 damage.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I expect Halflings will be able to do anything a dwarf can do in future editions.

Other than hold their liquor.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Other than hold their liquor.

what are you talking about, don't you know that a halfling bartender can hold nearly twice as many mugs at a time than a dwarven one!

 

[bedir than]

Other than hold their liquor.

Stares in Stout Halfling

 

[CleverNickName]

An effective -5 to the attack is a harder restriction than -1 and -1 damage.

If all we are considering is the effect of an attack roll with a specific type of weapon, I'd agree with you. But in 3E, that penalty to Strength affected a lot more than attacks...it changed how much you could carry, which feats you were eligible for, the armor you could wear, and so on. Now, all of that is ignored or optional in 5E, replaced with "you have Disadvantage with these six weapons right here."

And that was still preferable to that flat "You can't do that," full stop, that we had played with under the older editions. Can't use polearms, can't use magic, can't use a longbow, can't, can't, can't...

 

[CleverNickName]

what are you talking about, don't you know that a halfling bartender can hold nearly twice as many mugs at a time than a dwarven one!