That is why I specifically chose something from the D&D wiki and specifically something that was unbalanced crap. Because... you can just homebrew it right? There is no reason to say that it should be fixed or better made, because you can just homebrew it. You've homebrewed other classes and class features after all.
No, because there's a big difference between a unbalanced homebrew class and a race you don't like because you think it has "insufficient lore" or is "boring."
It doesn't matter that one of the things is a race from the beginings of the game and the other is a new class written by some rando, the same standards should apply. If you have homebrewed something, then you can just fix it by homebrewing and there is no reason to say anything about it being bad or needing fixed. Or... if you feel like that is not how things work, if there is some reason that "you can just fix it yourself" isn't a good reason... maybe you should stop saying it to me about halflings. Maybe "you can just homebrew them" is an insufficient argument against me.
Except that's not been my argument.
You are willing to accept insufficient or boring lore for races you are OK with, such as dwarfs. You are willing to homebrew your own lore about them. You are willing to read between the lines for them. But you're completely unwilling to do that for halflings.
Especially since, AGAIN, you have accused me of a position I do not hold. I never said to "chuck" halflings as a race. I have only said that their lore is poor and they should be rewritten. Additionally, I have pointed out that pushing them out of their position as one of the Core Four, and expanding that to cover additional races has seemingly obvious benefits of allowing races with better lore to be included.
Which is stupid because you can just add additional races into the PH simply by expanding the page count.
And which other races have better lore? There's only a tiny handful of races with any decent amount of lore, and most of those are formerly always-evil monster races. And you'd have to
rewrite all those races unless you want to write about how all that lore you know about orcs and goblinoids pillaging and raping their way across the world because their evil gods wanted them to? Totally true, in the past, but ignore that now. These races deserve a retcon, but that means that they don't have better lore.
The only race I can think of that (A) has a lot of lore and (B) isn't monstrous are the githzerai... who are invariably linked with the used-to-be-always-evil githyanki.
Because halflings are adventuring travelers who gather stories... and despite the lore telling us they do embellish their stories a little bit... you want to claim that they do no such thing... because they lack a need for ornamentation? Which is just flat out wrong as shown in the PHB artwork alone.
Sigh... because they don't feel the need to be fancy in their everyday environment, it's evidence that they probably also wouldn't feel the need to embellish their stories, at least not to the point that they stop being factual and start being complete fiction. Thus, the lore they gather would remain mostly accurate, and probably about as accurate if you wrote them down from the primary source.
Yeah, you keep trying to make this a thing, but it isn't a thing.
You keep trying to claim that you aren't being dismissive of them just because you don't like them, but you are.
Well, quite simply because of religion. All dwarves worship Moradin, and as part of their worship of Moradin they worship him as a forger and crafter. Do some dwarves put out shoddy material? Maybe. But it is baked into them by their creator deity to create exceptional things.
Halflings have a god of adventure, Brandobaris. Adventure is baked into them by their god.
(Also, IMO, being able to create exceptional things because your god programmed you to? Boring AF. At least being programmed to adventure means that all the discoveries you make are still because of your own efforts, even if the urge to go out and make them was implanted.)
Now, you might attempt to turn this around on me. The halflings have gods after all... but, none of the halfling gods or goddesses are about telling stories. They tell stories about the gods and goddesses, but every race does that. It's called having a religion. None of the deities though have "storytelling" as part of their portfolio. Moradin is a God of Crafting. Dwarves craft because they were made by a God of Craft, and they venerate him through craft. That is why I can say with some certainty that all Dwarves make a big deal out of crafting, while I can question if all halflings really gather stories full of ancient and forgotten lore.
"They don't have a god for it, so it's not important to them"? That's a really poor argument.
It seems for you an adventurer is simply someone who travels and is curious. That is an incredibly low bar I doubt I'd see reflected anywhere else.
OK, so what's
your definition of an adventurer?
Thank you for the link that proves my point. I mean, I don't even need to click on it, the text that shows up lays out my exact point. "Usually, villains have a personality or manner that underscores how evil they are." That is proving my point. The reason "affably evil" exists is that it is a subversion of expectations.
You seem to have missed the entire point. Go read the link. It's a subversion, but it's a really common one, and it undermines your point that good-natured people are always good.
Reliance on the strength of the group =/= Reliable. Those are different versions of the same word.
If they're not reliable, then the group would fall apart. They are versions of the same meaning of the world.
Do you happen to read these before you just throw them down thinking they will dispute my claims? Because, the end of the first sentence reads "heroic criminals in fiction are usually Neighbourhood Friendly Gangsters"
Did you actually read the page? I'm guessing no, since the page specifically calls real world organized crime like the Mafia and Yakuza for the good that they did at certain times. For instance, Al Capone opened a soup kitchen during the Depression. Are any of these people Good?
So, you gave me a trope for a type of hero, to prove that liking the common folk is a negative trait for villains? I think it is a bit self-evident why that doesn't work and instead just proves my point.
No, but it proves that helping the common folk doesn't automatically mean Good, like you claimed.
Second paragraph "but the mark of Villainous Valor is that it sees the "bad guys" using tropes that you wouldn't expect from them. In fact, if you were just tuning in, you might even be confused about who you're expected to root for."
So, your trope proves, once again, that I was correct. Bravery from villains is seen as a positive quality to make them more like heroes. Maybe you should double check these to make sure they don't support my arguments... or heck, you could just save me the effort of making arguments by making them for me. These massive multi-page long posts are kind of exhausting.
It mostly proves that you don't actually read anything. Are you saying you've never rooted for a bad guy because you thought they were cool?
Supposedly, but everyone wants to defend halflings with individual traits, then say I must hate those traits because I don't like halflings. The fact that supposedly no halfling breaks from these molds, but I can casually break elven and dwarven molds also speaks to the strength of those two races compared to the halfling.
The fact that you consistently refuse to accept things about halflings that you gladly accept about other races strongly indicates that you just hate halflings so much that no amount of good traits would make you ever say "well, I guess that they're not
that bad."
I'm saying that "bearded" isn't a trait. It is a visual style. Trying to say that dwarves as a race have "beards" as a thing that defines them is... dumb. Yes, it is a fact about them, but it doesn't rise to the level of actually being a defining racial trait in my view.
They really don't have many other traits. They work hard. They craft things with stone and metal. They drink. They are short and have beards. They like axes and hammers. They're stubborn. They're boring.
And I'd say it's a defining trait, considering there has been quite a bit written over the years about dwarfs and beards, and what the beard means in their society, and how angry or depressed a dwarf who lost his beard would be, and if female dwarfs have beards (yes), and stuff like that.
I've read it. Don't understand why you think that counters anything I said. Heck, the word "flighty" doesn't even show up, so I guess thank you for again proving my point. Elves aren't flighty as far as this text is concerned.
Do you know what the words "gently chaotic" mean?
Or go look at elves from earlier editions.
Because a lack of lore means there is a lack of things to do with them.
Only if you're too boring or unimaginative to look at their lore and realize what it means.
A lack of things tieing them to the setting, and to make for good hooks. That is why it is bad, though I would really hope that that was a bit self-evident. I mean, if a world builder presented you with a world that lacked lore, it wouldn't be considered a very good world.
Have you
read the threads in this forum? A lot of people love Nentir Vale because it lacked lore. A lot of people yearn for the days when all there was was Hommlet. A lot of people like being able to not be drowned in the backstory and instead be able to actually
do something with a published setting.
Oh, and when I challenged them on that... other posters came in to tell me how not every race needs to be grimdark and I should look past my own biases because some people like stories about humble heroes who enjoy happiness.
Yes. That should be a big clue that halflings aren't boring.
You don't like them. Which is fine. But there's a difference between saying "I don't like halflings" and "halflings are objectively boring."
No they are not. And you totally can play a thousand-year old elf and act as an info dumper. The Hermit background in particular is great for it.
I'm sure many DMs would be thrilled by having a PC who knows more about the setting than the DM wants them to.
Also, um... why does it matter that they are an NPC? The point is that they are a race of people who could have been physically present. Reading about a story in a book is completely narratively different than speaking to someone who was physically there. For example, a book can't answer questions unless it is a magical book, and even then, it makes no sense for it to answer questions about things not inside the book.
Assuming the elf's memories are accurate. How good
are a thousand year old elf's? Their description doesn't say that they're perfect or even all that good.
Who seems more wise and weighed down by the ages, the 500 year old running around their lab and asking if you saw that latest lightning storm because it was just so cool, or the 500 year old sitting in their study sadly reminiscing about the decline of the world and how all their friends have passed away and left them behind.
Neither of them seem
wise, actually. But the one with the lab is probably a lot more knowledgeable. The other one seems depressed.
I mean seriously, appearance? That is the least important reason you could have possibly used.
So what else besides appearance lends someone to looking like they have the weight of ages upon them? Do tell, because apparently you know. If your answer is to just tell the players, "You see an elf. She seems to have the weight of ages upon her," I shall be very disappointed.
Huh? You aren't following. The point is to play the race that aligns with what you want. If you want to be the best stonesmith, blacksmith, ect, you play a dwarf. You want that flavor. You can't get that flavor from Fire Giants, because you can't play them. You can't associate with them and say "and these are my people with this special place in the world" because... they aren't your people.
How many players want to be the best stonesmith or blacksmith? The best swordfighter or spellcaster or pickpocket, sure. But how many PCs even have
time for any of stonesmithing, let alone enough to be the best? If it's more than a handful in the history of D&D, I'll be completely shocked.
Best you'd get is to say that you are part of a race that produces (some of) the best stonesmiths... but then you're just a hanger-on. And then I'd reply, "OK, so what have
you done?"
Then show me an image of humans carving a mountain into a face, not a face in a mountain, a mountain into a face.
It's a work in progress, but not bad considering its currently almost 90 feet tall and much of it was done by a single person (and as of 2007, only four people). How many dwarfs worked on the face of Lord Mror and how long did it take them?
Also, does
carving a mountain into a building count? No photos of people actually carving the mountain because they did it well over a thousand years ago. Which is pretty impressive, since I doubt they had tools equal to a dwarf's. Or magic.
But go on and keep pushing those goalposts away. You've done it everywhere else, might as well continue.
So... you want to claim that the generic lore for halflings is a setting problem, not a problem with the generic lore for halflings?
Yes, because as I and others have said multiple times, there are several settings where halflings have a great deal of lore. Eberron, Dark Sun, Birthright. You keep choosing to ignore that.
I guess if you take the position that the PHB is set in Faerun I can see that, but... that is a disputed point.
Since all the human ethnicities are from Faerun, it can't be
all that disputed.
So, my point still stands. Either like Eberron and Dragonlance everyone worships the same gods. Or like FR and Greyhawk the non-humans all worship the same dieties, and then there are generic trope deities and regional dieites that humans worship. But there is no human, racial pantheon worshipped by all humans and only humans in any setting we've talked about so far.
So? There's always going to be some people who worship a god from a different race or culture. It doesn't change the fact that those are listed as
human deities. Or that there are completely separate
halfling deities. No matter how much you want to claim otherwise. Or do you want to say that every book and website that says "human gods" and "halfling gods" is wrong?
So... no. You don't have that happen. It only happens if they would roll a 1, and then they reroll.
So, if a trap has a DC 15 and a halfling rolls a 2, getting a total of 4 they still get hit by the trap and their luck is meaningless. So, how do you show they are lucky? I mean, we are immediately back to where we started when you just said yes that all those things I listed are true, but in practice none of them are true.
Sigh again. Because they are Lucky, they gain an extra chance to make their save. Since halflings are normally dexterous, that means they have a generally higher than average chance of succeeding.
Lucky doesn't mean "always wins." Lucky means "wins more often than others."
No I certainly do. This also has nothing to do with the point being discussed. Fear without a mechanical incentive can be RPd all day long, and the halflings brave ability would never trigger. In fact, if the halfling player was the one RPing the fear... they wouldn't be acting brave.
But the halfling would have a good reason
not to RP fear.
Which only applies to magical fear and homebrewed rules that add in fear where it didn't exist before. The warlock who was Roleplaying being terrified of their former teacher can attack without disadvantage, even if they say their hands are trembling. So... again... I'm not seeing a good way to portray the trait without basically turning to my players and saying "you all have to take mechanical penalties to RP fear, and halfling player, you aren't allowed to RP fear, halflings don't get scared"
I really feel like you're being deliberately obtuse here. Either that or you really don't understand the difference between a game mechanic and roleplaying, or even what the basic game mechanics do. Because this is beyond ridiculous. Halflings aren't immune to fear. They are more likely to save against it. Halflings don't always succeed on a save, attack, or skill check, but because they are lucky, they almost never fail
that badly.
I did read the entry. I pointed out that I have troubles finding a way to adequately portray it in the game, and you started berating me for how I must not understand what the word brave means.
You clearly don't, since you think it means they're immune to fear.
Then how do you explain the halfling being allowed to move through its space but the human isn't?
Humans don't have the Nimble trait. Therefore, they have to make a roll if they want to move through a space.
I am aware of this optional rule. I agree it should be in the PHB. We both agree that it isn't in the PHB.
So... how does this work into me having trouble showcasing what Halfling Nimbleness means in the fiction, since they always succeed on this without a check?
If you can't figure it out, get the player to do it for you. It's their character; they should be the one to tell you how their character is awesomely getting past a gelatinous cube. I already gave you examples of how it could be done. You dismissed them because "what wall?" and "the text doesn't say that they're bendy." I mean, the text doesn't say that they have nose hair but we can make assumptions.
