D&D General why do we have halflings and gnomes?

The PCs haven't to be as the rest of their communities. Most of halflings would rather a peaceful life, like the ordinary humans, but sometimes a halfling has to become an explorer or even an adventurer because she needs a lot of money for her family, because her mothe is sick and the special medicines are too expensive. Or her family is a group of refugees whose original home was attaced by raiders and slave-trafficers.

If it was necessary the halflings would built walls for their hobbittown with more traps than the killboxes from the videogames "Orcs must die" or "Fortnite: Save the World".

There was a subrace of evil halflings, the jerrens from 3rd Tome of Vile Darkness, and even the rest of the evil humanoids had got good reasons to be afraid of them.

Halflings can be fun characters if the author makes a good work, for example something like Tiny Tina, the crazy babe from Borderlands.

Halflings are good for rogues and other stealth classes, but not so optimal to be spellcasters or warriors with no-light armors.

When Hasbro chose to produce a reboot of My Little Poney they couldn't know if it would be a flop or a smash-hit. It was the second. The trolls movies by Dreamworks have been true blockbusters. If Hasbro hires the right people to produce a chidren-friendly cartoon about gnomes and halflings as adventurers it may become a new smash-hit.

Maybe in a future sourcebook the racial traits for gnomes can be replaced by a special bloodline allowing being optimal PCs as digimon-trainers or monster riders. Or a bloodline with psionic powers and telepathic links to be a ogre-rider as Ferra+Torr from Mortal Kombat X.

Umbran said:

But... it doesn't. I mean, we are out of 4e - "Points of Light" is no longer the default assumption. In the Forgotten Realms, being the default example, Phandalin stands there without walls, and does okay with just a group of adventurers for defense....

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Which to be fair... kind of doesn't make a lot of sense.

Neverwinter wood at a minimum has Gnolls and Goblinoids, either of which is a dire enough threat to wipe out a small town. Especially Goblins, Hobgoblins and Bugbears which are terrifying foes for a normal village. It also looks like there are at least two dragons.

And the Sword Mountains have at a minimum Trolls and multiple orc tribes, again, either of which is a dire threat to a town.

And Phandalin is a mere few days walk from both those locations. As well I believe the adventure features undead and Blights, again, at a minimum.


DnD worlds are terrifyingly dangerous.

doctorbadwolf said:

Where do you get “no urge to protect themselves” or “no desire to engage in world politics”? Hell, even “no ambition” is a leap that only follows if you view conquest as the only avenue of ambition.

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I do agree that "no desire to protect themselves" is far too much of a stretch...

But Halflings do seem like they don't organize themselves beyond the level of "homestead". They might have a sheriff and a mayor, but that is about it. They don't have an organized military, or even an organized guard watch as presented in the PHB and Mordenkainen's.

They have a town militia maybe, but even that is closer to the level of an organized posse than it is anything else.


And in a world where the threats are so sudden and dire, where an orc horde or Hobgoblin legion can come roaring out of the wilderness, or a nest of ankehegs could explode up beneath them, it is questionable how well that would work, if not for "Halfling Luck means those things don't attack them"

Chaosmancer said:

I do agree that "no desire to protect themselves" is far too much of a stretch...

But Halflings do seem like they don't organize themselves beyond the level of "homestead". They might have a sheriff and a mayor, but that is about it. They don't have an organized military, or even an organized guard watch as presented in the PHB and Mordenkainen's.

They have a town militia maybe, but even that is closer to the level of an organized posse than it is anything else.


And in a world where the threats are so sudden and dire, where an orc horde or Hobgoblin legion can come roaring out of the wilderness, or a nest of ankehegs could explode up beneath them, it is questionable how well that would work, if not for "Halfling Luck means those things don't attack them"

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plus if luck is some kinda reward from the god as Mordenkainen suggests well we know gods have been none to die or be killed and the halfling gods are not a large or powerful pantheon what's stopping them from dying or being killed off by other gods?

plus how did they get set up in the first place? shires do not form from nothing?

halflings are a message race the is built no around being small but around a certain type of behaviour.

Minigiant said:

There are still barbaric tribes, violent monsters, and evil cults ready to pounce deep in every wilderness of FR.

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Which is why they stay out of the deep wilderness.

Minigiant said:

POL isn't the assumption but from 1e to 5e, "out there" is dangerous.

So a race of people with no ambition, no urge to protect themselves, and no desire to engage in wold politics seems odd.

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So, I see two things tied together that maybe we should pull apart -

One is, "no urge to protect themselves". The other is "no ambition, no desire to engage in world politics".

I mean, on ambition and world politics - heaven forefend a people be satisfied with a peaceful life with the basic comforts of home! They're well fed, warm, have their friends around, a fiddle and a nice mug of ale at hand, and they're happy with that. How odd that is indeed!

Have you considered that this is perhaps some of the intent - to point out how most of the problems of the world may come from having too much ambition and greed? It is a fantasy world, maybe indulge the fantasy that folks can just like living without a need to claw their way to the top?

Umbran said:

Which is why they stay out of the deep wilderness.



So, I see two things tied together that maybe we should pull apart -

One is, "no urge to protect themselves". The other is "no ambition, no desire to engage in world politics".

I mean, on ambition and world politics - heaven forefend a people be satisfied with a peaceful life with the basic comforts of home! They're well fed, warm, have their friends around, a fiddle and a nice mug of ale at hand, and they're happy with that. How odd that is indeed!

Have you considered that this is perhaps some of the intent - to point out how most of the problems of the world may come from having too much ambition and greed? It is a fantasy world, maybe indulge the fantasy that folks can just like living without a need to claw their way to the top?

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And it's not crazy to think that perhaps this love of home makes them more willing to go on adventures to protect that home.

Also, it makes me think halflings establishments are places where the proprietor is always friendly, but there's always a shotgun next to the cash register.

Like they're the Switzerland of fantasy races

Chaosmancer said:

Which to be fair... kind of doesn't make a lot of sense.

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I'm sorry, but... your notions of civil defense seem to be as outmoded as the notion that a thick-walled castle is useful when the opponent has flying people throwing fireballs and sappers with stone shape.

Chaosmancer said:

Neverwinter wood at a minimum has Gnolls and Goblinoids, either of which is a dire enough threat to wipe out a small town. Especially Goblins, Hobgoblins and Bugbears which are terrifying foes for a normal village. It also looks like there are at least two dragons.

And the Sword Mountains have at a minimum Trolls and multiple orc tribes, again, either of which is a dire threat to a town.

And Phandalin is a mere few days walk from both those locations. As well I believe the adventure features undead and Blights, again, at a minimum.

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So, let us remember that Phandalin is in the context of being a few days from Neverwinter. If any force tries to "wipe out the town", Neverwinter is going to see that as a particular threat, and will drop a Bag Full of Paladins^tm on the mess and let the gods sort them out. The risk-to-reward ratio for "wipe out the town" is poor, even for a particularly dim-witted orc.

What you forget is that Phandalin isn't actually undefended. It just isn't defended by a wall and a standing army. They're defended by an intelligence network that calls in adventurers when signs of nastiness arise. The Forgotten Realms is a world not of entrenching a standing army in every village, but of letting elite special forces units take care of issues.

I'm running an Underdark campaign now that draws on a myriad of different sources, and in the process I've come to love the svirfneblin.

The classic adventure "Empire of the Ghouls" features Glimmerfell, a once great deep gnome city that was destroyed by flooding. I've taken this detail, but modified it so that Glimmerfell was in the Underdark of the Feywild and the flooding was caused by fomorian enemies.

Given that svirfneblin are already described as dour, untrusting people, I figure the supernatural influence of the Feywild and mass death and destruction in their lifetimes would make these svirfneblin particularly prickly and predisposed to assume the worst. I also decided that these Feywild deep gnomes would be more likely to possess the Fade Away and Svirfneblin Magic feats.

Next, I took inspiration from the 4E Underdark book, which mentions a dwarven mining colony called Sheerdrop in the Underdark that was overtaken by deep gnomes. In my campaign, the Glimmerfell survivors and a few fey allies stumbled upon a tunnel to the Material Plane and set-up a new community in a gem-rich chasm. Eventually, particularly ruthless dwarves started attacking to claim the gemstones for themselves. The svirfneblin, having already had one community destroyed in living memory, devised deadly traps that funneled the dwarves into chutes and over cliffs, plunging them to their deaths at the bottom of the chasm (where myconid allies used the corpses to begin a large mushroom farm for the community). Thus, the isolationist svirfneblin city came to be known as Sheerdrop by the dwarves, a name the deep gnomes gladly accepted to scare away visitors.

I also decided to make the deep gnomes of Sheerdrop followers of Sunnis, an archomental of Earth most extensively detailed in a 3.5 Dragon magazine article, though I've only referred to her as the Truestone so far in the campaign.

I also designed a svirfneblin assassin NPC who has the abilities of the Fade Away, Svirfneblin Magic, Fey Touched, and Shadow Touched feats, creating a character with a lot of useful tricks.

Chaosmancer said:

I do agree that "no desire to protect themselves" is far too much of a stretch...

But Halflings do seem like they don't organize themselves beyond the level of "homestead". They might have a sheriff and a mayor, but that is about it. They don't have an organized military, or even an organized guard watch as presented in the PHB and Mordenkainen's.

They have a town militia maybe, but even that is closer to the level of an organized posse than it is anything else.


And in a world where the threats are so sudden and dire, where an orc horde or Hobgoblin legion can come roaring out of the wilderness, or a nest of ankehegs could explode up beneath them, it is questionable how well that would work, if not for "Halfling Luck means those things don't attack them"

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Not really. None of those things actually happen with any frequency, and when they do, MToF suggests that a decent percentage of halflings experience wanderlust and go adventuring before settling down, so every village probably has a handful of retired adventurers on top of thier militia.

Umbran said:

Which is why they stay out of the deep wilderness

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What happens, like in many D&D campaigns, when the wilderness comes to you and you have no military?

Umbran said:

Have you considered that this is perhaps some of the intent - to point out how most of the problems of the world may come from having too much ambition and greed? It is a fantasy world, maybe indulge the fantasy that folks can just like living without a need to claw their way to the top?

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Well we are talking about a fantasy game ABOUT scary monsters and evil humanoids living out there.

I can get such a fantasy in a kids Saturday morning cartoon show.

But halflings having no army, no magic, tons of food, and staying out of politics seems a bit weird in a world of dark lords, drow, and dragons.