Since you don't seem to get the point, I'll repeat it once instead of a dozen more times: I am extrapolating from the existing lore. Just like you probably do for elves, dwarfs, humans, and all the other dozens of races out there.
Just because you use a fancier way of saying "adding" doesn't change what you are doing. Just because I chose to homebrew other races doesn't mean that I find halfling lore lacking more than the lore for other races.
These aren't arguments against my points. They are trying to tell me that I shouldn't have an issue with the existing lore, because I've changed other existing lore in the past. Perhaps you could try arguing something other than "if you add to the lore, you can fill in those gaps, and then those gaps never existed"
When I've had to repeat that extrapolating from existing lore isn't just rewriting them or making stuff up whole-cloth, for probably the dozenth time, yes, my temper starts to fray a bit.
You may claim you don't need a bullet point list, but you apparently do since you don't seem to see the actual lore unless it's spelled out and claim that extrapolation or expanding upon the existing lore is the same as completely making it up.
Nope, I never claimed you were making it up whole cloth. I said you were
adding to the existing lore. That is not the same as making it up, and I'm surprised you would try and say it is.
Are you rewriting the lore? Eh, for a value of the idea of rewriting. Adding can be considered a rewrite. But, just because I can recognize when you start adding lore that doesn't currently exist, doesn't mean I need things spelled out for me. It means I can tell what the book says, and then see that you are adding and going beyond what they say.
Which is perfectly fine and valid for your home game. But since we are talking about what the books say and how the books present the race, because that is the official presentation of the race from the company to the gaming community... I'm not seeing how your additions are supposed to matter, except in the abstract value of Rule Zero, AKA DMs can make up whatever they fell like, adding and subtracting from the existing lore at their leisure.
From the wiki: "Halfling culture had a fondness for stories and legends and was rich in the oral tradition. So much care was put into the retelling of traditional stories and their preservation that halflings often unwittingly had access to lore about ancient and long-gone cultures or empires that others had long since forgotten about. Many halflings were able to recall some detail of the ancient past, though it was usually wrapped in the shrouds of legends."
They may not have developed the halfling Dewey decimal system, but that all sounds like lorekeeping to me.
So, a few dissents here.
1) "Lorekeeping" implies a rather formalized structure. As in, halflings would have people whose job it is, officially, to keep lore. They would have a name for such a person. For example, in Eberron the goblinoid people have the
Duur'Kala, a position that is all about keeping the lore of their people. A Lorekeeper.
2) You see that bolded word? Unwittingly. This means that halflings have access to lore about ancient and long-gone cultures.... by accident. That means that they are not a traditional lore keeper race. They aren't going out and purposefully collecting lore for the purpose of preserving it. They are just... accidentally telling stories that happen to have those elements. Which cuts straight through the idea that their race is supposed to be a race of lorekeepers.
It's an extrapolation. No other race is depicted as being both part of a society and also rejecting that society's rulers and having "inherent stealth and [an] unassuming nature [that] helps halflings to avoid unwanted attention. No other race is depicted as being good farmers or chefs. There are logical conclusions that can be drawn from this information. I showed you one such conclusion.
Actually... there are quite a few other races that have some tradition of making amazing food.
And, if you want to say that you reached a conclusion, for writing your own lore, that is fine. But if you want to say that the halflings must be running the world, because no other race is shown as part of society, but rejecting rulers and being stealthy... well then Kobolds must be the masterminds behind dragons. Secretly manipulating them with false worship.
You might be thinking, no, kobold worship is real, it says they worship dragons. Well, halflings it says have no ambitions beyond their simple lives, yet you want to make them the puppetmasters of human kingdoms and potentially beyond, so... sure, you can make up a setting where all the small races secretly rule the world. But lets not try and say that is RAW, especially with the utter dearth of anything that states halflings secretly rule human kingdoms.
It's not a contradiction. They adventure for a while, then settle down. Or vice versa. It says the same thing with elves, after all. Or some halflings stay at home and other halflings adventure, like the PH actually says.
That isn't what you said the first time. You are changing it to make it not a contradiction
Yes. They aren't just staying at home twiddling their thumbs. They are literally going out there and exploring. That's what the text says. "Exploring Opportunities." There's more to adventuring then going out with the express purpose of killing monsters, after all.
I asked if they were adventurers who were nomadic, or nomads, and you replied yes. So, you are saying all nomadic people are adventurers? So all Goliaths and orcs are adventures, because they are a heavily nomadic people.
I would say there is more to being an adventurer than being nomadic and traveling to different places.
Except that the text doesn't say "majority." You're so keen on what the text says unless it actually says halflings adventure. I already went over this.
You misread my post.
Why am I focused on pastoral farming halflings instead of nomad bands of halflings? Because the majority of the text in the book (not the majority of halflings, because as you say, it doesn't tell us if it is the majority of halflings) focuses on them as pastoral farmers. So, I am taking my cue by focusing on the same thing the text focuses on. Which doesn't say that halfling adventurers don't exist, or that halfling nomads don't exist. But it does spend the majority of the time focusing on the halfling homebodies.
They do have an identity. Taking solely from the PH and their part in MTF, the vast majority of halflings:
- are stealthy
- are lucky
- are brave
- are nimble
- enjoy an easy, comfortable life but are willing to go into great danger and suffer great hardship when the cause is right
- are reliable and cooperative
- are open and welcoming to all because they judge by intentions and actions, not by race or appearance
- are good cooks and good farmers
- are good-natured, cheerful, and optimistic even when things are bleak
- are practical
- are knowledgeable of old lore
- are natural storytellers and prefer aesops to outright instruction
- are empathic and generous, even to those they don't know
- are humble and not interested in shows of wealth
- are great hosts
- are filled with curiosity and wonderment
- are unflappably calm in the face of danger
- are good with the common folk and prefer them to nobility, soldiers, and scholars
- are peaceful and peace-seeking
- are good at seeming harmless and innocuous, so they are easily overlooked
And there are no evil gods in their pantheon. None. Even the gnomes have an evil god.
This is their very complex hat.
No other race has that combination of traits. Each race has some of those traits, and some
individuals of other races have all or most of them, but no other race has them all. Not even humans.
This is the halfling identity. You just don't like it.
This is a genuine question here:
what more do you need?
So, traits #3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 13, 14, 15, 18, 19 and the lack of evil gods all read as... they are Good aligned. They have generic hero traits. I mean, seriously, some of these are just bland "I'm the good guy"-isms.
You also repeated yourself, unless Brave is somehow different than being unflappably calm in the face of danger. Or being open and welcoming is different than being good-natured is different than being good hosts.
So, let me kind of narrow down this "very complex" hat that you've made here.
Stealthy and nimble. Lucky. Good, salt of the earth people, like stories and have many old stories. Very brave. Cook and farm.
That's a whole bunch of character traits, sure, but does it really tell you anything? Except that halflings seem to be monolithic in personality traits. No other race has these universal personality traits of every member of the race being good, kind, helpful salt of the earth people? Isn't that a good thing?
I mean, reading this list, it is over and over again telling us how good, how pure, how good, and how uncorrupted and how good halflings are. They are just simple, kind folk with nothing more than their comforts of home. ALL OF THEM. I can see why people keep saying they make perfect adventurers, every single one of them is a YA fantasy protagonist.
And yes, I'm getting a little hyperbolic and frustrated, but it seems that listing personality and character traits and saying "all halflings are like this" is perfectly fine, but saying that I can play those characters without playing a halfling is me being a terrible and closeminded person.
Except Brownies did once exist in DnD. Maybe you got confused. Hard to tell, especially when nothing else was meant to be taken as a joke.
Mining is very subjective. Dwarfs make big halls and giant tunnels. Any earth elemental would be bothered by this wanton destruction of rock. Clearly, to them, the best miners are the ones who do the least amount of damage to the stone.
You may think that's a dumb reason, but that's because you're not an earth elemental.
Earth Elementals are practically mindless, and have no opinions. Actually came up in our last game, that per the lore they are basically non-sapient beings. Also, you have no idea if Earth Elementals would find that upsetting or not. So, I'm not really going to engage in your "but I can make anything subjective" approach.
I'd say if you read the stuff you cut you might have an idea. I'm not sure I'm up for repeating myself when you don't bother responding to what I write anyways.
Any of them? I don't know much about the Realms, but its my understanding that there are racial pantheons there for a reason, and most people stay within their race's pantheon.
And there is no human pantheon. It doesn't really exist.
I guess you could take the egypt pantheon that is for a specific human culture, but there is no human racial pantheon. Which was my point.
And yet halflings manage to have their own generalities, their own gods, their own mores and customs, despite living in other people's cities.
And us being told that they don't have a unique culture. Seems weird, doesn't it. Like they want them to both have and not have a culture.
"Is it A or B"
"Yes"
Well, thanks for not answering any question or helping to clarify.
Except that the DM can call for PCs to make saves against mundane fear effects as well. While the Fear and Stress mechanics of VGR may be new, some of us have been using something similar for years.
VGR? Wait, Ravenloft?
Sure, a DM can make a homebrew decision, or use whatever brand new rules you want, but "we've been playing homebrew for years, and therefore all halflings are extra good against mundane fear because that's how our homebrew works" is... poor.
And I can't talk to how the rules of the horror setting, that I believe you explicitly mentioned you run as solely human, apply to this. Because I've never encountered those rules.
Again, read the lore. "This aspect of the halfling mind-set accounts for what members of other races often characterize as courage. A halfling about to enter the unknown doesn't feel fear as much as wonderment. Instead of being frightened, the halfling remains optimistic, confident of having a good story to tell when it's all over."
Great, so they aren't scared of the unknown.
Are they scared of the known?
Although I don't like racial ASIs, they traditionally have always had a bonus to Dexterity which represents all of the above.
So, you didn't mean their actual trait, you meant +2 Dex. Well then... there are a lot of races with that. Not all of them are referred to as nimble either, like say... goblins, and kobolds.
Why does that need special representation? They're good at moving between the legs of larger creatures. Of course it wouldn't work with creatures their size or smaller.
But that isn't what the ability does. They can freely move through the space of a Gelatinous cube. They don't have legs. They can move through the space of a giant snake, also no legs.
Humans can't move through the legs of Giants, but halflings can. I'm looking at everything the ability does, and it does more than just let them move between the legs of a creature. That's the inspiration I'm sure, but when I talk about not being sure how to represent it, I meant for more than just that single thing.
Well, then I guess you are free to continue saying it is neutral to let your child be devoured by wolves just because it is dark outside.
There are surprisingly few monsters like that in Ravenloft.
Surprisingly few? So... they do exist. Like I said.
Funny that.
They have their own laws. Nobody says LG means you have to follow other people's laws.
Rabbithole.
