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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yaarel" data-source="post: 8381178" data-attributes="member: 58172">Re halfling Strength score 20A gnome can easily be Strength 20 because it is a magical creature. In Scandinavia, the small nisse is superhumanly strong because it is the immaterial force of the mind of a house. In D&D terms, the Stength of a fey or a shadow doesnt correspond to having biological muscles. So if a player wants a Gnome with 20 Strength score, no problem.The halfling depends on what the concept is. To the degree that the setting is Tolkien, the halfling appears to be one of the smaller  human ethnicities. Humans can get Stength score +2 using their feat, and a small human, say shy of 4 feet tall, would not mechanically prevent this.If the halfling is actually a small human child, the it is difficult to imagine high Strength. But if the halfling isnt human at all, then there is no problem. A halfling is about the same size as a chimpanzee, and a chimpanzee can be extremely strong.Possibly D&D characterizes the halfling as a nonmagical creature. But its lucky trait seems magical, even fey. Perhaps the halfling has gnomish ancestry and is magically strong.There are various ways to explain exceptional Strength. It would be easier if the halfling had a clearer identity, rather than left as a vague placeholder for Tolkien movies and novels.The D&D game allocates different jurisdictions. The player needs to be in control of what character concept one wants to play, especially to ensure the reallife player is comfortable with the character, but also to ensure the character is interesting and fun to the player.At the same time, the DM needs to be in control of the setting, including how the world works, the tone such as drama or comedy or so on, and the places and ethnicities of the setting.All of this is normal session zero stuff. Hopefully the DM is enthusiastic about a setting that the players are into. And hopefully the players are building character concepts that the DM can enjoy thinking about.I rarely see halfling characters.But as a player I did have a character concept dispute about cantrips. While playing in a 4e campaign, my friend wanted to DM a 3e campaign. Heh, he already knew that I loathe D&D gods, and that was a nonissue for him. My character was an elf Cleric who focused on the mystical aspects of light as both energy and consciousness. What turned out to be an issue is cantrips. He hated cantrips (I forget why). But I hated being without cantrips. For me, the mage is an important archetype, and being forced to use nonmagical weapons for most of the game is unfun. So we negotiated. As an elf, my bow shot arrows of light energy, tnat were mechanically identical to arrows, except luminous and occasionally might matter versus undead or so on. Both of us were happy. It was close enough to a normal weapon for him, and appropriate enough to the Cleric concept, and close enough to a cantrip for me for the concept of a magical character. After session zero the campaign proved awesome.The point is session zero is when the player control of the character and the DM control of the setting, can be incongruent. When it is important to have a character that is atypical in some way in the setting, both the player and the DM need to agree on how that character fits in the setting.So if a DM who hates strong halflings has a player who loves them, fight out why they care. If it is more than a passing whim, explore ways that it might seem to work. Maybe the halfling has a great gramdfather who is a grugach elf hiding as in the form of a halfling. A background story can come from it.</blockquote>

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