Sorry, which one? They have a good dozen replies between your post and mine.
So, the fact that they're lucky enough to never roll a 1 means that they're not lucky?
So is a human or dwarf player who never rolls a 1. That doesn't make the halfling special. Heck, the player probably only noticed because they were expecting to reroll and never did, while the other players being that "lucky" is never even brought up.
I have already given you numerous examples of how to do this. If you can't figure it out from there, you need to read up on GMing 101.
To reiterate:
- They roll and succeed, or they roll and fail: This is just like with anyone else, although a halfling may be more likely to ascribe this to good or bad luck than to skill, because they are superstitious and believe very strongly in luck.
- They roll a 1, reroll, and succeed: They succeeded by the seat of their sensibly sturdy trousers*. See? Lady Luck is smiling on them.
- They roll a 1, reroll, and fail: They failed normally instead of catastrophically. See? Lady Luck is smiling on them, because things could have been a lot worse.
- They roll a 1, reroll, and roll another 1: They have failed catastrophically. Fickle Fate has flicked them the finger, which she is wont to do on occasion. (I ran out of alliteration.)
(* Halflings invented denim. Change my mind.)
Would it be too much to ask for you to respond without insulting my GMing skills at least once? It really gets old to be constantly told that I must be a terrible GM because something that it seems no one has a good answer for gives me issues.
To go through your reiterations
#1 -> Tell the player to be superstitious about their ability to succeed. By the way, failing is usually considered bad luck (instead of poor skill) and there for it would be that the halfling who is lucky, is portraying themselves being unlucky with equal frequency to every other player, unless they decide that instead of being skillful, they were lucky. This is not a great solution to making a race feel lucky at all.
#2 -> In this one instance, they were lucky. Congrats! I had acknowledged that this is something you can do, but it requires first a failed roll with a 1, which is only 5%, not counting the percentage of rolls, and even if we assume every single roll is 50/50 that means that this ability comes up for only 2.5% of die rolls. Or about two and half rolls for every two hundred rolls
Is that enough for a race to be seen as unusually lucky? What do I do if the player doesn't feel like this ability makes them feel lucky enough?
#3 -> We don't use crit fail rules. So this is a complete non-issue. This is basically going back up to the otherside of point #1, they just fail. Whether that was bad luck or lack of skill, or something else, it is no different than their normal failures.
#4 -> Again, we don't use crit fails as a rule. So, again, this is identical to #3 and #1
So, I guess by me needing to go back to GMing 101 you meant that I should incorporate a homebrew rule that my groups have universally agreed not to use because we dislike it, and then hope that the halfling player is satisified pretending to be unusually lucky, or rolls a lot of 1's that they then succeed on the second roll.
Man, no wonder I'm a terrible GM with no talent. I should just tell my players to do it themselves. That's how I make sure that a race who has a major feature of being lucky is actually portrayed as lucky.
Halflings have advantage on saving throws against being frightened.
Dwarfs have advantage on saving throws against being poisoned (and resistance to poison damage).
Elves have advantage on saving throws against being charmed.
How do you make dwarfs and elves feel more resistant to toxins and mind-control without making the other players play their characters in specific ways? I mean, if you, like probably most other gamers, assume that poisons also includes alcohol and dwarfs are naturally resistant to the effects of alcohol and therefore can drink like a particularly stupid college student on spring break and not feel a thing, do you force the other PCs to be lightweights in order to show how special a dwarf's liver is?
No, but you are missing the point.
To be resistant to poison means that poison needs to be introduced. And yes, a common way to do that is through alcohol, and anyone with poison resistance having a much higher tolerance. I've actually got a few alcoholic drinks that I won't even have a person who has poison resistance roll to down, but I will for someone who doesn't.
But, introducing poison is a specific element. There is no question about when poison comes into play.
Against Charm Effects? Same thing. Advantage against charm magic is a specific event, and it is easy enough to describe characters who are elves fighting harder or something else.
"Brave" is a against Fear. But fear and bravery are basic emotions and they are something that is up to interpretation. If I introduce poison to the game, the players don't get to tell me how their body reacts to poison. But if I introduce something frightening, they do get to tell me how they react to that fear.
Which is why my initial point was that halflings are unusually resistant to magical fear... which can work, but it doesn't make them particularly brave, in the standard way of understanding it. Because fear is a basic emotion, it is much harder to figure out how to incorporate this trait in a way that makes sense for the setting and how things work.
Especially when you consider that Gnomes are ALSO resistant to fear AND charm from magical effects, due to gnome cunning. But if I said gnomes are unusually brave, people would likely disagree with me.
And again: it is up to the players if they want to roleplay their characters as being frightened or not of something mundane. Not up to you.
Right. So, why do you keep accusing me for being a bad DM for saying that I don't know how to make a race of people feel like they are particularly brave, when the entire thing is up to the players and has nothing to do with me? And being up to the players, it is entirely possible that the halfling player who wanted to be specially brave, feels like they aren't because the other players are also RPing themselves as equally brave?
So stop complaining about it until then. Talk about how a future edition can improve them or come up with your own lore about them instead of kvetching about how boring they are and dismissing everyone else's attempts to show you what they can be.
I DID try talking about them for future editions. Everyone decided that I was a terrible person and you've spent multiple pages attacking me as a GM and everything else because I can't see how I can homebrew them to be better for my table.
I know I can homebrew them. I know I can change them for myself. The entire point though is that they weren't like that right now, and that is a problem for editions going forward if we just keep ignoring halflings and thinking that the strength of Tolkien is enough to support them.