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

[Dannyalcatraz]

Perhaps we need a bland race of non-human everypersons whose purpose is to allow DMs to muck about with and create a set of lore for and make uniquely their own without the stretching involved in the other races

I don’t think we NEED that, but I think it’s an elegant if under-appreciated (and perhaps unintentional) aspect of the game design.

They may not have intended halflings to be a place where individual DMs can flash their style, but it’s a solid design.

 

[Gnarlo]

Maybe after messing around with all kinds of high level stuff in his Silmarillion campaign, he thought the e8 version of the Hobbit and LotR was a lot more fun to bring out in public first. Not everyone likes the high level stuff.

There’s a whole other thread on how no one plays that Silmarillion stuff so we ought to just end D&D at Morannon level.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

But silver is common. Unless you mean, weakness to silvered weapons is/shouldn't be common. In that case, devils and at least some other shapechangers are also damage by silvered weapons.

Apologies for my imprecise use of pronouns. The “their” was meant to refer to Fey. I clarified somewhat a little later, but allow me to try again.

Creatures immune to nonmagical weapons other than those made of silver are all very powerful. Silver, while rare enough to be precious, is still common enough that commoners have a ghost of a chance of defending themselves.

Fey, playable or not, are powerful, but not usually as individually powerful as lycanthropes or demons. Most are still vulnerable to mundane weaponry. Making them EXTRA vulnerable to something as common as mere iron would cripple them immensely. So “cold iron”- whatever it is- is rarer than the regular stuff and not the same as steel. (It may or may not be rarer than silver.)

 

[Mind of tempest]

I don’t think we NEED that, but I think it’s an elegant if under-appreciated- and perhaps unintentional- aspect of the game design.

They may not have intended halflings to be a place where individual DMs can flash their style, but it’s a solid design.

given that I never hear of dm doing anything with halflings or their lore I doubt it is a practical function and besides bland and easy to work with is clearly the humans role as they are the bread of the sandwich.

There’s a whole other thread on how no one plays that Silmarillion stuff so we ought to just end D&D at Morannon level.

Morannon?

 

[Gammadoodler]

given that I never hear of dm doing anything with halflings or their lore I doubt it is a practical function and besides bland and easy to work with is clearly the humans role as they are the bread of the sandwich.

Morannon?

"Never" seems hyperbolic to the point of silliness in the context of a 166 page thread where both official settings and homebrew have been discussed..at length

 

[Oofta]

given that I never hear of dm doing anything with halflings or their lore I doubt it is a practical function and besides bland and easy to work with is clearly the humans role as they are the bread of the sandwich.

Morannon?

More than one person has been shut down when talking about how they implement halflings in their world because "we're not talking about your campaign world". I have as much or more lore about halflings as any of the other races I allow in my campaign.

 

[Faolyn]

Apologies for my imprecise use of pronouns. The “their” was meant to refer to Fey. I clarified somewhat a little later, but allow me to try again.

English needs more pronouns built in. Can we go back in time a thousand years and fix this?

Creatures immune to nonmagical weapons other than those made of silver are all very powerful. Silver, while rare enough to be precious, is still common enough that commoners have a ghost of a chance of defending themselves.

Fey, playable or not, are powerful, but not usu as individually powerful as lycanthropes or demons. Most are still vulnerable to mundane weaponry. Making them EXTRA vulnerable to something as common as mere iron would cripple them immensely. So “cold iron”- whatever it is- is rarer than the regular stuff and not the same as steel. (It may or may not be rarer than silver.)

Gotcha. I didn't mean vulnerable in the double damage sense. I would prefer it if, like many other creatures, they either had resistance to nonmagical damage that wasn't cold iron, or regeneration that doesn't work if they take damage from cold iron.

 

[Faolyn]

I'd also say... D&D could grow out of "Racial Cultures" by now. Eberron is an exception, where wich nation you are form tells us more about you culturally than your ancestry. I'd like to see multiple cultures based on different aspects of the same ancestry, more cultures that grow of mixing ancestrys, cosmopolitan cultures.... I'm quite tired of "This is the elf nation, those are the dwarf clans, that is the dragonborn empire".

Well, Eberron is a specific setting. I don't think most people have a problem with specific settings having mono-cultures. I mean, I definitely agree with you that there should be more multicultural cultures in the official settings, but if the Realms or Greyhawk want to have Elf Nation or Dwarf Nation, that's the Realms or Greyhawk.

The problem is that the base lore assumes mono-cultures are the norm, and that needs to change. Perhaps the 6e DMG needs to have a section on culture-building and guidelines for creating such places.

 

[Faolyn]

given that I never hear of dm doing anything with halflings or their lore I doubt it is a practical function and besides bland and easy to work with is clearly the humans role as they are the bread of the sandwich.

Um, lots of people in this thread, including myself, have talked about how we use halflings in our game. Does it not count because we haven't made them Totally Badass Epic!?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

given that I never hear of dm doing anything with halflings or their lore I doubt it is a practical function and besides bland and easy to work with is clearly the humans role as they are the bread of the sandwich.

Just because YOU haven’t heard of it happening doesn’t mean it never happens. And as of reading this thread, you HAVE heard of people doing things with halflings and their lore.

Edit: many halfling ninjas have already struck.