D&D General My Problem(s) With Halflings, and How To Create Engaging/Interesting Fantasy Races

[Hussar]

How many of those references to Dwarves say they built something in the past?

No idea. I just went with the number of times the word came up. But, I think the point is fairly well made. Halflings really aren't being put into the adventures. I wonder how those numbers fall out in other books.

 

[Bardic Dave]

Speaking animals are always tricky. The spell doesn't actually increase their intelligence. What can the animal actually understand? Dogs are about as smart as two-year old humans, and most animals are quite a bit dumber than dogs.

I prefer to be generous with animal intelligence for things like speak with animals, for a few reasons:

1. I like my players to feel rewarded for both their in-game decisions and their character building choices (e.g. spell choice),
2. I like to err on the side of moving things forward and not getting too bogged down in long futile scenes that serve to frustrate the players (e.g. “The squirrel refuses to discuss anything except acorns.”)—although such scenes can be fun if employed extremely sparingly, and
3. Less importantly, I think most people vastly underestimate animal intelligence, in a similar way to how people (historically) have often underestimated the intelligence of other people with whom they don’t share a language. Saying that dogs are as intelligent as a two-year old while a reasonable approximation if painting in broad strokes, is a fairly crude generalization once you start looking at specifics. In reality, they vastly outperform toddlers in some measures of intelligence, while lagging behind in others.

 

[pemerton]

where did you get that from? also is that not the evil dwarves?

I think you're confusing your Spriggans with your Duegar!

 

[Bardic Dave]

I think you're confusing your Spriggans with your Duegar!

Not hard to do, considering both are diminutive humanoids with the power to grow. Personally, I prefer spriggans, but that’s probably because of fond memories of running Kingmaker about ten years ago. Loved that campaign.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Reasons:

People play them. Maybe not a lot, but enough.

The fill the everyman niche well, and people like them for that.

They're generic enough that it's very easy to stick them in any world with few or no modifications. Many other races--dragonborn, any planetouched, gith, minotaurs, kobolds, goblinoids--have enough differences or history that they don't fit in some settings well.

They're traditional.

They don't take up that much space in the book.

More races can be added to the PH without having to remove them.

you act like 5e even listed dragonborn lore, they are popular on pure concept alone.

Not hard to do, considering both are diminutive humanoids with the power to grow. Personally, I prefer spriggans, but that’s probably because of fond memories of running Kingmaker about ten years ago. Loved that campaign.

but having them as evil gnomes would be certainly too similar.

 

[Bardic Dave]

but having them as evil gnomes would be certainly too similar.

Not sure how they were portrayed in AD&D, but they are indeed evil gnomes in Pathfinder. Here’s the description from the pfsrd; judge for yourself if they’re too thematically similar to Duergar. They’re distinct enough for my tastes.

Pathfinder SRD:
When the gnomes first traveled to the mortal realm from the distant land of the fey, some found the Material Plane so strange and terrifying that they lost their sense of joy. Seeing only the threats of the new world but none of its wonders, they grimly resolved to survive no matter the cost. Their innate magic responded to this twisted goal by reshaping them in mind and body over the course of many generations, transforming them into the creatures known as spriggans. Love, happiness, and beauty have no meaning for these poor souls, so they lead lives of violence and malice. The best they can manage in place of positive emotions is a muted satisfaction when they make another suffer.

Spriggans resemble ugly gnomes with an alien, feral appearance. Many are gaunt and haggard. When magically enlarged, they look the same except much more hale and muscular.

 

[Don Durito]

There's a really interesting taking on Gnomes in Kobold Press's Midgard Setting.

Some creatures of Midgard are gentle, loving, and brave. The gnomes of Niemheim are none of these things. They are servants of Hell.

It was not always so. The gnomes lived among the people of Krakova for many years as friends and allies, teaching humans the arts of fey sorcery, weaving, and gardening. They were a kindly people, always eager to discuss the finer points of pottery, alchemy, tanning, and the illumination of manuscripts. Their hats and noses were sources of mirth, but their wisdom was valued and respected.

Then, 200 years ago, a gnomish prince betrayed a promise made to Baba Yaga. A blood oath of loyalty and service was foresworn. The prince died swiftly, but his people’s suffering was slow.

Ever since, it is said, she has sought to use their beards for her pillow-stuffing. The gnomes lived in fear of night-haunts, strigoi, the ala hags and the psoglav demon-dogs— all servants of Baba Yaga. The gnomes lived in perpetual pants-wetting terror, knowing their children would be grist for Baba Yaga’s mortar, and their villages kindling for her fire and her hunting drakes. Village by village, the gnomes disappeared.

Until one day, a devil of the Eleven Hells made the King of the Gnomes an offer. A generous offer, kind and yet sly…

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

There's a really interesting taking on Gnomes in Kobold Press's Midgard Setting.

Blah. That's the same kind of stuff people on the old Mystara Mailing List said had to be done with the halfings of the Five Shires in order to make them interesting.

If you can't make them interesting without going edgelord, just leave them out.

I'm disappointed in the Kobolds, honestly. Paizo showed you can give a full rich life to gnomes without turning them inside out to do so.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Sunlight sensitivity is a terrible rule, but why wouldn't you as a GM let them have the goggles or something like that?

I never said I wouldn't. The only player who ever got to that part started telling me that his character wouldn't struggle with sunlight sensitivity because there was this really common magic item that they could buy to get rid of it. They were coming from an older edition and just barrelling ahead assuming that everything was the same.

When I told them that I had no idea what that item was and that it didn't exist in 5e, they immediately dropped their idea and switched to something else.

Besides, even if I did make magical goggles that let them ignore sunlight, if I gave it to them immediately at character creation like they wanted, I might as well have simply written the rule out of the race.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Whatever the DM or world creator wants. Players use them just fine. So does Eberron. So does Dark Sun. There are multiple factions of them in the Nentir Vale. I've stated what they do in Warhammer. That the Forgettable Realms don't use them is a reflection of why I've always found it a tedious setting. That said I prefer Realms halflings to Dragonlance ones.

None of that answers the question.

I started this off saying that we needed to talk about narrative role for the halflings, and that if you removed them from most settings it wouldn't affect the setting at all, and that most people wouldn't notice.

You immediately declared that that was not the narrative role of halflings. Definitively and went on to tell me that there are 4 to 5 players for every DM.... completely skipping out on the fact that you never stated their narrative role. Even as you tell me that setting writers and adventure writers are simply too lazy to use them correctly.

Now, when directly asked the answer is... whatever you want. But their narrative role isn't "whatever you want" because if it was then they'd have even less of an identity than they do. Also, while Dark Sun has a unique take on them... they actually don't affect the setting in a meaningful way as the players play. They live far off in the corner of the map, where the land is completely different and are cannibals. It is only if you dig into the origins of the planet that you might learn more about them, and if you do... it still doesn't matter. It is like reading a fantasy novel set in a fantasy world with fantasy characters and at the very end they reveal that you were America circa 8,000 CE and that the modern world fell so long ago that no one remembers. It doesn't really change the story in any way, the story was the exact same without that "twist"

So, do you actually have an answer for what narrative role halflings play, or are you simply going to go with "I can make up anything" to somehow prove me wrong that... what, they have a narrative role? I mean, I never stated one in my original post (which mentions Eberron and Darksun) you just declared that I was wrong about what it is.

Nah. It points to the way they were used in Dragonlance. Tinker Gnomes, Gully Dwarfs, and Kender are all bad comedy races.

And what does that have to do with the lack of tools being a defining character trait in 5e? I mean, great I guess, you can't get past gnomes as they were presented in Dragonlance, but I'm somehow terrible for looking at how halflings are used generally and not across every setting ever published in any medium.

Also, by this point in your reply, you have literally skipped half my post. This is 12 paragraphs in. I addressed your ridiculous claim that forest gnomes are knock-off lightfoot halflings. I addressed your view that forest and rock gnomes are somehow opposing forces. I covered why forest gnomes are amazing in the forest. I covered Rock Gnomes should get more than tinker tools.

Are you simply agreeing with me and moving on?

And if I didn't know D&D the picture below is a gnome. And "half of a thing" is half the size of a [human] thing. Which tells you more than "gnome" does.
View attachment 139055

And? Quite literally that statue could depict a halfling. They are a small person after all.

Tell a random person on the street about "gnomes" or "goblins" or "fairies" and they likely can at least get a context for what you are talking about. Ask them about halflings and they might ask you if that is a new sale down at the diner.

Just because garden gnomes exist doesn't mean gnomes don't have an identity. Googling "Goblin" gives you a lot of different images, some of which you wouldn't even think were goblins if they weren't being pulled up as results.

You've two different concepts tangled there that about half of modern urban fantasy mythology tries to disentangle. A Fairy is a small winged magical creature and the Harry Potter ones draw from the same well as Tinkerbell. The Faeries, the Fair Folk are a different kettle of fish.

I'm not tangled up at all. That's my point.

Tinker Bell is far more likely to be what people in the mainstream culture talk about instead of the The Fair Folk. Yet, the Faeries aren't made meaningless and garbled because of the Fairies. So, why would gnomes be meaningless and garbled because people buy garden gnome statuary?

Are dragon's meaningless because Chinese Dragons are very different from Western Dragons? And even Western Dragons vary widely? No. So, we should apply the same standards evenly.

And the 5e D&D version of gnomes is possibly the least interesting possible version (except possibly the dwarf wannabes from AD&D). It's a halfling putting on airs. At least the 4e ones had a connection to the feywild and were thus meaningfully part of the Fair Folk. There is plenty of room for something that't actually different and more mythical - but that's not the 5e one.

The original gnomes, as introduced by Paracellus were earth spirits (even rock gnomes fail at this), 18" tall and that could move through earth. And having halflings there should free gnomes up to be at least as magical as genasi. But instead we get gnomes that are halfling wannabes.

I went into great detail about how they are not halfling wannabe's in my previous post. Gnomes in 5e are also tied to the Fey, I don't know why you think they aren't, except maybe missing the Fey Ancestry? But Gnome Cunning does the exact same job in a lot of ways.

The only thing I can imagine is that you are conflating anything short with halflings. Which is silly, but since you seemingly ignored every single thing I said in my last post to pull out the least relevant bits to try and knockdown... I can't really do more than guess at how you can possibly think that gnomes are somehow lesser halflings. They have a much deeper place in the worlds of DnD, and are far more interesting than the halfling.