D&D General Short folk appreciation thread – what do you play?

[Scribe]

Dwarves are not small in the way that guys who spend way too much time at the gym and know their height down to the quarter inch are not short.

I don't know if this is a call out...but I assume so.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

kobolds are kind of peak, i'm not even gonna pretend i'm not biased. they just have a lot going on that you can latch onto - engineering, dragons, social structure, place in the world, it's so easy to just grab something about them and implement it into your pc and start running. and you can make it comical, you can make it serious, you can make them just a little guy/gal/whatever, you can make them a little freak of nature, you can do whatever you want with them and it WORKS.

goblins are similar, they just have less to work with in my experience, really, and what they do have mostly overlaps with kobolds a lot and i just...prefer kobolds. i guess there's the whole goblin/hobgoblin/bugbear thing, but if there isn't a lot going on with the goblinoids in the setting it's just kind of...there.

gnomes kind of fall flat for me because generally their whole thing is either "illusionist" or "mad scientist" and "illusionist" isn't something i really care for while kobolds and goblins have enough that i can pull "mad scientist" out of them if i want without it being literally their entire thing.

halflings are...fine? as a default small race? i guess? they're fairly inoffensive, but without the context something like lord of the rings has, they kind of just feel like humans but small sized.

autognomes...i just...don't understand. at all.

 

[Tonguez]

halflings are...fine? as a default small race? i guess? they're fairly inoffensive, but without the context something like lord of the rings has, they kind of just feel like humans but small sized.

autognomes...i just...don't understand. at all.

yeah autognomes were always a bad joke, since they first appeared in 2e, someone had obviously been watching too much of Star Wars and Buck Rogers and wanted their own Twiki.

and yeah now that humans can be small, theres very little point to halflings

 

[CreamCloud0]

i don't know how controversial this is going to be but i don't especially care all that much about the idea that halflings are lucky, it's like, the lore equivalent of porridge to me: it fills them up and gives them something, but it's a bit bland, there's not much to do with it, not to mention dice manipulation mechanics have always been a divisive topic.

so, if you were to give them something else that helps define and set apart their identity beyond 'smaller than humans, less magical than gnomes' what would it be? though i get that part of their appeal is being 'the ordinary guys' in big fantasy world where even humans are typically seen as heroic so you don't exactly want to make them too crazy.

i think i'd personally probably give them something social-y, in addition to stealing firbolg's hidden step and immunity to difficult terrain or the like.

 

[Shades of Eternity]

R.P.G. Spelljammer Sandbox - Part 6 - The Glorious Gnome Empire of Mechanicles

To speak of the Glorious Gnome Empire is to tell a story about how the weak became the strong. While not the largest faction, they have a f...

breadthofpopsanity.blogspot.com

Gnomes are one of my prominent species in my Spelljammer game.

The great Gnome Dyson is basically Rassilon in this world and has built truly insane cosmic constructs, including a Dyson sphere around Gnome Space.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

yeah autognomes were always a bad joke, since they first appeared in 2e, someone had obviously been watching too much of Star Wars and Buck Rogers and wanted their own Twiki.

It's possible to do some interesting stuff with autognomes, but it would require someone really drilling down on them. But I wouldn't be surprised if, 10 years from now, autognomes are a core part of some new 5E setting or classic adventure path, and everyone loves them. (I remember when people were really, really upset about warforged and today, you see people wondering why they're not in the PHB.)

and yeah now that humans can be small, theres very little point to halflings

People love hobbits and more people play D&D than either of the Lord of the Rings RPGs. Halflings are for those folks. For the people who just care about mechanics, they don't matter, but I'd argue that those folks mostly just want a bag of interesting mechanics anyway.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

i don't know how controversial this is going to be but i don't especially care all that much about the idea that halflings are lucky, it's like, the lore equivalent of porridge to me: it fills them up and gives them something, but it's a bit bland, there's not much to do with it, not to mention dice manipulation mechanics have always been a divisive topic.

so, if you were to give them something else that helps define and set apart their identity beyond 'smaller than humans, less magical than gnomes' what would it be? though i get that part of their appeal is being 'the ordinary guys' in big fantasy world where even humans are typically seen as heroic so you don't exactly want to make them too crazy.

i think i'd personally probably give them something social-y, in addition to stealing firbolg's hidden step and immunity to difficult terrain or the like.

If there was to be a cozy fantasy sourcebook for D&D, giving gnomes and halflings some sort of cozy bonus would be a natural way to go.

Barring that, halflings and dwarves probably could use some sort of bastion bonus, to the extent that people are using that subsystem.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

i don't know how controversial this is going to be but i don't especially care all that much about the idea that halflings are lucky, it's like, the lore equivalent of porridge to me: it fills them up and gives them something, but it's a bit bland, there's not much to do with it, not to mention dice manipulation mechanics have always been a divisive topic.

well also if i want to play a character whose gimmick is being lucky i...don't necessarily want to play a short character?

though i get that part of their appeal is being 'the ordinary guys' in big fantasy world where even humans are typically seen as heroic so you don't exactly want to make them too crazy.

but if i want to play an ordinary guy im going to play a human! because humans are ordinary!!!

 

[mamba]

A kender, then we find out how far that appreciation goes

 

[bedir than]

and yeah now that humans can be small, theres very little point to halflings

I'm regularly confused by this type of statement.
Humans and hobbits, harfoots, kender, tallefellows, kithkin, Athas cannibals are different -- even if they are small.

It's ok to not like halflings, but the consistent diminishment of the wee folk is exactly why the wee folk exist.