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

[doctorbadwolf]

Do you not see how that is my entire point? Their post was about halflings. Their post then went out of their way to set up a dichotomy. If you are against halflings, you are against all of those traits they listed. You in their own words, only see the point in playing edgelords and anime characters. Again, their EXACT words stated this unequivocally.

I’m not going to keep litigating this. Several other people understood what they were saying, but it is what it is.

Their words stated that if you don’t see the value in a race that is just those traits, nothing more complex or grand or dark or world-shaking, it comes across as not valuing those traits.

Right now, they are not only in the PHB, but they are under the "common races" section in the PHB.

As they should be.

In the future should they still be listed like that?

Yes.

Or would it make more sense to have them in a later release, and move popular races like goblins and gnomes up?

No.

Using Merry as an example of what Hobbits are is very misleading, because no other hobbit is like him.

He represents part of what halflings are. I could also use Samwise in the Orc tower when he is saving Frodo.

Is that truly a flawed premise? If I wrote a character in a novel who had no flaws... did I write a good character? No.

A race isn’t a character. Besides, people have already pointed out some easy flaws you can play with you want that.

Which again, that is hard to work with. That is hard to make into anything that a player can explore or dig their teeth into.

For you, perhaps. Not for people who enjoy halflings as they are. And you can just use gnomes. No one is being deprived of anything, here.

I can play that simple character with anything. But, when I build out the world. When I look to "who are elves in the wider world" I have a lot to pull on.

For me, I find the same is true of the halfling.

I can look to their origins, their religion, their place in the larger world and see how they affect it. With haflings... you can't. They don't have an origin. They don't have a place in the world other than "they live in small communities near humans".

My point, again, because I know things can get lost in these novels we are writing back and forth, is that that place is good. It is good that a “core” race (insofar as that concept even matters) is just folks.

Here’s my question, then.

If Brandobaris (my favorite halfling god) and Yondalla and all the other FR hin deities had a solid writeup in 5e, with things like what kind of PCs might represent different priests and knights and other servants of their gods, and the River halflings of 4e (who are mentioned in the 5e PHB) had a little more prominence, and there were some notes in some subclasses about how this or that tradition started with halflings, would that be enough?

Because if not, I think maybe this really is just a case of you not liking halflings and trying to spin it into something bigger than that.

But regardless, it remains a good thing that a core race is just folks.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

But halflings are supposedly on the same tier and if they aren't mentioned... I don't notice.

Because you don’t like them.

I wouldn’t notice dwarves. I often forget they exist. I also didn’t notice that we’d had no clerics in my games for nearly a decade until a player recently multiclassed cleric.

But halflings, I’d notice.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Sure, they aren't against individual DMs doing what they want, but they do seem to be against the company making large changes going forward.

Large changes, sure. I don’t support changing the character and basic premise of stuff between editions unless it’s obscure like Firbolgs.

But adding lore would be fine. As long as it doesn’t involve changing them into something completely different. Halflings don’t need innate magic, or a dark history of violent colonialism, or whatever.

The gnome writeup in Mordy’s is great, for instance. One of the only lore sections I don’t dislike in that book. I wish that halflings had gotten as fun and interesting a writeup.

Just more info on their gods, reminders of halfling heroes, notes of halfling traditions that can be viewed as PC builds, etc.

And more info about the River halflings, and how they tie the trade relations of various realms together, as well as being a welcome source of information as they go from town to town.

 

[Mecheon]

I've never been able to find a good lore difference between Mountain Dwarves and Hill Dwarves. They mostly seem to be a culture difference, which is easily explained away as different dwarf cities being different.

Honestly, the best one I've seen on this is Warcraft.

Warcraft has all three types of dwarf. Your Mountain dwarves are the regular in your Ironforge dwarves, who have all of that regular dwarf-ness plus archaeology as they have a bit of a thing about looking up their history

Then there's the Wildhammer, the hill dwarves, who ride gryphons, have shamans, and have above-ground villages with underground houses. They're the berserker warrior type but also fairly friendly with elves

And the Duerger equivilent are the ashen-skinned Dark Irons who were enslaved by the Elemental Lord of Fire for the past few centuries until we murdered him, and now they're in the position of being The Morally Ambiguous Alliance Race. Most magical of the dwarves

 

[Yaarel]

Honestly, the best one I've seen on this is Warcraft.

Warcraft has all three types of dwarf. Your Mountain dwarves are the regular in your Ironforge dwarves, who have all of that regular dwarf-ness plus archaeology as they have a bit of a thing about looking up their history

Then there's the Wildhammer, the hill dwarves, who ride gryphons, have shamans, and have above-ground villages with underground houses. They're the berserker warrior type but also fairly friendly with elves

And the Duerger equivilent are the ashen-skinned Dark Irons who were enslaved by the Elemental Lord of Fire for the past few centuries until we murdered him, and now they're in the position of being The Morally Ambiguous Alliance Race. Most magical of the dwarves

These are decent Dwarf cultures. They remind me of classic martial Fighter Dwarf versus recent primal Druid Dwarf.

But I wish the Dvergar (using a reallife culture term) were more mythologically accurate. These "dwarves" are different.

Dvergar Traits
• Actually is the mind of a feature of rock or clay
• Petrifies in sunlight (when reaching zero hit points from radiant damage)
• Personifying an ineffective fate, whence curses and destruction
• Typically same height as human
• Black hair, sunless pale skin
• Somber, protective or cruel, generally uncooperative
• As rock, are unmoving, perceived as shamanic trance, mind outofbody
• Powerful mages: psionic, primal, elemental (earth)
• Superlative makers of tools and technology
• Extreme Strength while holding something up without moving
• Typical classes: Psion, Druid, Bard, Artificer, Cleric (cosmic force of fate), Wizard

 

[doctorbadwolf]

These are decent Dwarf cultures. They remind me of classic martial Fighter Dwarf versus recent primal Druid Dwarf.

But I wish the Dvergar (using a reallife culture term) were more mythologically accurate. These "dwarves" are different.

Dvergar Traits
• Actually is the mind of a feature of rock or clay
• Petrifies in sunlight (when reaching zero hit points from radiant damage)
• Personifying an ineffective fate, whence curses and destruction
• Typically same height as human
• Black hair, sunless pale skin
• Somber, protective or cruel, generally uncooperative
• As rock, are unmoving, perceived as shamanic trance, mind outofbody
• Powerful mages, primal, possibly arcane
• Superlative makers of tools and technology
• Extreme Strength while holding something up without moving
• Low Charisma relating to ineffective fate, not taken seriously despite power
• Typical classes: Druid, cosmic force Cleric of fate, Artificer, Wizard

That is a take on them, but hardly universally agreed upon.

Whether they all turn to stone in the sunlight is debatable, as plenty of stories of them don’t feature that.

 

[jayoungr]

Or would it make more sense to have them in a later release, and move popular races like goblins and gnomes up?

What's the evidence that gnomes, in particular, are more popular than halflings? (I don't recall seeing evidence for goblins either, but I'd find that easier to believe for a variety of reasons.)

 

[Yaarel]

That is a take on them, but hardly universally agreed upon.

Whether they all turn to stone in the sunlight is debatable, as plenty of stories of them don’t feature that.

The texts in the Old Norse language mention how the Dvergar petrify in sunlight. Kennings for the "sun" include "the game of Dvalin", where Dvalin is an ancestor representing all Dvergar, and the "game" is being careful to avoid direct sunlight. The Dvergar Alvis is tricked by Thor into remaining above ground while the sun rises, thus becomes stone.

Becoming stone relates to how the Dvergar are certain rock formations.

For D&D, spellcasting a Fog Cloud, and similar magic, would screen out direct sunlight.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The texts in the Old Norse language mention how the Dvergar petrify in sunlight. Kennings for the "sun" include "the game of Dvalin", where Dvalin is an ancestor representing all Dvergar, and the "game" is being careful to avoid direct sunlight. The Dvergar Alvis is tricked by Thor into remaining above ground while the sun rises.

And other tales have them walking in sunlight.

 

[Faolyn]

Of course that was mostly with 3e and 4e. In 5e with the group I mostly game with now we would notice the absence of elves, but mostly because Half-elves in 5e are awesome, and they have to come from somewhere.

Just call 'em something else. If you don't like elves but have fey in your setting, call them fey-touched. And Eberron has half-elves as their own people now. Maybe there used to be elves in your world, but they cross-bred themselves into extinction.